—_— 


BERTRAND SMITHS 
BOOK STORE 

140 PACIFIC AVENUE 

LONG BEACH. CALIF, — 


THE 


LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


BY 


LILIAN BELL 


“ Some ships reach happy ports that are not steered” 


NEW YORK 
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 


1893 


Hee RS ee 


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Copyright, 1893, by HARPER | 


Dedication 


book is dedicated very fondly to my beloved family, - 
meg wg to render me material assistance, have 


PREFACE 


IT is a pity that there is no prettier term 
to bestow upon a girl bachelor of any age 
than Old Maid. “Spinster” is equally 
uncomfortable, suggesting, as it does, cork- 
screw curls and immoderate attenuation of 
frame; while “maiden lady,” which the 
ultra-punctilious substitute, is entirely too 
mincing for sensible, whole-souled people 
to countenance. 

I dare say that more women would have 
the courage to remain unmarried were there 
so euphonious a title awaiting them as that 
of “bachelor,” which, when shorn of its ac- 
companying adjective “old,” simply means 
unmarried. 

The word ‘‘ bachelor,” too, has somewhat 
of a jaunty sound, implying to the sensitive 


vi PREFACE 


ear that its owner could have been married 
—oh, several times over—if he had wished. 
But both “spinster” and “old maid” have 
narrow, restricted attributes, which, to say 
the least, imply doubt as to past opportu- 
nity. 

Names are covertly responsible for many 
overt acts. Carlyle, when he said, “The 
name is the earliest garment you wrap 
around the earth-visiting me. Names? 
Not only all common speech, but Science, 
Poetry itself, if thou consider it, is no other 
than a right naming,” sounded a wonderful 
note in Moral Philosophy, which rings false 
many a time in real life, when to ring true 
would change the whole face of affairs. 

Thus I boldly affirm, that were there a 
proper sounding title to cover the class of 
unmarried women, many a marriage which. 
now takes place, with either moderate suc- 
cess or distinct failure, would remain in 
pleasing embryo. 

Of the three evils among names for my 
book, therefore, I leave you to determine 


PREFACE vii 


whether I have chosen the greatest or least. 
The writing of it came about in this way. 

In a conversation concerning modern 
marriage, the unwisdom people display in 
choice, and the complicated affair it has 
come to be from a pastoral beginning, I 
said lightly, ‘I shall write a book upon this 
subject some fine day, and I shall call it 
‘The Love Affairs of an Old Maid,’ be- 
cause popular prejudice decrees that the 
love affairs of an old maid necessarily are 
those of other people.”’ 

No sooner had the name suggested in 
broad jest taken form in my mind than 
straightway every thought I possessed crys- 
tallized around it, and I found myself im- 
pelled by a malevolent Fate to begin it. 

It became a fixed intention on a Sunday 
morning in church during a most excellent 
sermon, the text and substance of which I 
have forgotten. Doubtless more of real 
worth and benefit to mankind was pent up 
in that sermon than four books of my own 
writing could accomplish. But, with the 


viii PREFACE 


delightful candor of John Kendrick Bangs, 
I explain my lapse of memory thus— 


‘TI dote on Milton and on Robert Burns ; 
I love old Marryat—his tales of pelf ; 
I live on Byron; but my heart most yearns 
Towards those sweet things that I’ve penned 
myself.” 

So the book has been written. The ex- 
istence of the Old Maid often has been a 
precarious one; she has been surrounded 
by danger, once narrowly escaping crema- 
tion. But my humanity towards dumb 
brutes saved her. I might have sacrificed a 
woman, but I could not kill a cat. So she 
lives, unconsciously owing her life to her 
cat. . 

Thus she comes to you, bearing her friends 
in her heart. I should scarcely dare ask 
you to welcome her, did I not suspect that 
her friends are yours. You have your 
Flossy and your Charlie Hardy without 
doubt. Pray Heaven you have a Rachel 
to outweigh them. 

Cuicaco, March, 1893. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 
i NTRODUCE ME TO MYSELF... . I 
me OMe INTO My KINGDOM. . . . . 8 
3 MATRIMONY Pe TIAGN Gas on ee 8 
Mean AG LOVERS... 5 ss 0 
Pete PnARD OF A COOQUETTE . . . °. 51 
6. THE LONELY CHILDHOOD OF A CLEVER 

RE are ge OG 
SA otuUpyY IN HUMAN GEESE... ... 78 
emaeMr OF EIRARTS =, 2. ; +... =. QI 
g. THE MADONNA OF THE QUIET MIND. . 120 

ete PATHOS OF FAITH . 3... |. 137 
II, THE HAZARD OF A HUMAN DIE . . . 156 


12. IN WuHiIcH I WILLINGLY TuRN My FAcE 
ROAR ea TA 


THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


I 
I INTRODUCE ME TO MYSELF 


‘* There is a luxury in self-dispraise ; 
And inward self-disparagement affords 
- To meditative spleen a grateful feast.” 
To-morrow I shall be an Old Maid. 
What a trying thing to have to say even to 
one’s self, and how vexed I should be if any- 
body else saidit tome! Nevertheless, it is 
a comfort to be brutally honest once in a 
while to myself. I do not dare, I do not 
care, to be so to everybody. But with my 
own self, I can feel that it is strictly a family 
affair. If I hurt my feelings, I can grieve 
over it until I apologize. If I flatter my- 
self, I am only doing what every other 
woman in the world is doing in her inner- 
I 


2 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


most consciousness, and flattery as honest 
as flattery from one’s own self naturally 
would be could not fail to please me. Be- 
sides, it would have the unique value of 
being believed by both sides—a situation 
in the flattery line which I fancy has no 
rival, 

It is well to become acquainted with one’s 
self at all hazards, and as I am going to be 
my own partner in the rubber of life, I can 
do nothing better than to study my own 
hand. So, to harrow up my feelings as 
only I dare to do, I write down that it is 
really true of me that I passed the first 
corner five years ago, and to-morrow I shall 
be 30. 

What a disagreeable figure a 3 is; I never 
noticed it before. It looks so self-satisfied. 
And as to that fat, hollow o which follows 
it—I always did detest round numbers. 

30; there it goes again. I must accus- 
tom myself to it privately, so I write it 
down once more, and it laughs in my face 
and mocks me. ‘Then I laugh back at it 
and say aloud that it is true, and for the 
time being I have cowed it and become its 


I INTRODUCE ME TO MYSELF 3 


master. What boots it if the laughter is a 
trifle hollow? There is no harm in deceiv- 
ing two miserable little figures. 

Let me revel in my youth while I may. 
To-night I am a gay young thing of twenty- 
nine. To-morrow I shall be an Old Maid. 
I have very little time left in which to make 
myself ridiculous and have it excused on 
account of my youth. But somehow I do 
not feel very gay. I have a curious feeling 

about my heart, as if I were at a burial— 
one where I was burying something that I 
had always loved very dearly, but secretly, 
and which would always be a sweet and 
tender memory with me. I feel nervous, 
too, quite as if I did not know whether to 
laugh or to cry. I remember that Alice 
Asbury said she was hysterical just before 
she was married. I wonder if a woman’s 
feelings on the eve of being an Old Maid are 
unlike those of one about to become a bride. 

My cat sits eying me with sleepy approval. 

_ J always liked cats. And tea. Why have I 
never thought of it before? It is not my 
fault that I am an Old Maid. I was cut 
out for one. All my tendencies point that 


4 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


way. Please don’t blame me, good people. 
Come here, Tabby. You and Missis will 
grow old together. 

After all, it is a sad thing “— one re- 
alizes for the first time that one’s youth is 
slipping away. Butwhy? Why do women 
of great intelligence, of intellect even, blush 
with pleasure at the implication of youth? 

There are fashions in thought as well as 
in dress, and the best of us follow both, as 
sheep follow their leader. We will some- 
times follow our neighbor’s line of insular 
prejudice, when worlds could not bribe us 
to copy her grammar or her gowns. Dull 
people admire youth. They excuse its fol- 
lies; they adore its prettiness. ‘That it is 
only a period of education, and that real life 
begins with maturity, does not enter into 
their minds. The odor of bread and butter 
does not nauseate them. Dull people, I 
say—and God pity us, most of us are dull— 
admire youth. Men love it. Therefore we 
all want tobe young. We strive to be young, 
nay, we w¢// be young. 

I am no better than my neighbors. I, too, 
am young when I am with people. But 


I INTRODUCE ME TO MYSELF 5 


there are times when I am alone when the 
strain of being young relaxes, and I luxuriate 
in being old, old, old; when I cease being 
contemporary, and look back fondly to the 
time when the world and I were in embryo. 

And yet I wonder if extreme age is as 
repulsive to everybody asitistome. Forty 
seems a long way off. I fancy people at 
forty become very uninteresting to the on- 
coming generation. Fifty is grandmotherly 
and suitable for little else. Sixty, seventy, 
and beyond seem to me one horrible jumble 
of wrinkles and wheezes and false beauty 
and general unpleasantness. Oh, I hope, 

if I should live to be over fifty, that I may 
bea pleasant old person. I hope my teeth 
will fit me, and the parting to my wave be 
always in the middle. I hope my fingers 
will always come fully to the ends of my 
gloves, and that I never shall wear my spec- 
tacles on top of myhead. But I hope more 
than all that it isn’t wicked to wish to die 
before I come to these things. 

Before I entirely lose my youth—in other 
words, before I become an Old Maid, let 
me see what I must give up. Lovers, of 


6 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


course. That goes without saying. And 
if I give them up, it will not do to have 
their photographs standing around. They 
must be—oh! and their letters — must 
they too be destroyed? Dear me, no! I'll 
just fold them all together and lay them 
away, like a wedding-dress which never has 
been worn. And I'll put girls’ pictures or 
missionaries’ or martyrs’ into the empty 
frames. Martyrs’ would be most appro- 
priate. 


Now for a box to put them in. A pretty 


box, so that one who runs may read? Not 
so, you sentimental Elderly Person. Take 
this tin box with a lock on it. There you 
are, done up in a japanned box and pad- 
locked. I would say that it looks like a 
little coffin if I wasn’t afraid of what my 
Alter Ego would say. She seems cross to- 
night. I wonder what is the matter with 
her. She must be getting old. I should 
like to hang the key around my neck on a 
blue ribbon, but I am afraid. ‘“ What if you 
should be run over and killed,” she says, 
“or should faint away in church? Remem- 
ber that you are an Old Maid.” How dis- 


Pe s. 


I INTRODUCE ME TO MYSELF 7 


agreeable old maids can be! And I’ve got 
to live with this one always. I'll put the. 
key in my purse. Nice, sensible, prosaic 
place, a purse. 

How late it grows! I have only a little 
time left. I believe that clock is fast. Dear, 
dear! Do I want to just sit still and watch 
myself turn? I meant to have old age over- 
take me in my sleep. I think I’ll stop that 
clock and let my youth fade from me una- 
wares. 


II 
I COME INTO MY KINGDOM 


‘‘There is no compensation for the woman who 
feels that the chief relation of her life has been no 
more than a mistake. She has lost her crown. 
The deepest secret of human blessedness has half 
whispered itself to her and then forever passed her 
by.” 

I HAVE become an Old Maid, and really 
it is a relief. I feel as if I had left myself 
behind me, and that now I have a right to 
the interests of other people when they are 
freely offered. My friends always have con- 
fided in me. I suppose it is because I am 
receptive. Men tell me their old love affairs. 
Girls tell me the whole story of their en- 
gagements — how they came to take this 
man, and why they did not take that one. 
And even the most ordinary are vitally inter- 
esting. Before I know it, I am rent with the 


I COME INTO MY KINGDOM 9 


same despair which agitates the lover con- 
fiding in me; or I am wreathed in the smiles 
of the engaged girl who is getting her ab- 
sorbing secret comfortably off her mind. It 
seems to comfort them to air their emotion, 
and sometimes I am convinced that they 
leave the most of it with me. 

Now I can feel at liberty to enjoy and 
sympathize as I will. Well, the love affairs 
of other people are the rightful inheritance 
of old maids. In sharing them I am only 
coming into my kingdom. 

Alice Asbury has made shipwreck of hers. 
The girl is actively miserable and her hus- 
_ band is indifferently uncomfortable, which 
is the habit this married couple have of ex- 
periencing the same emotion. 

Alice is a mass of contradictions to those 
who do not understand her — now in the 
clouds, now in the depths. Bad weather 
depresses her; so does a sad story, the 
death of a kitten, solemn music. She is 
correspondingly volatile in the opposite di- 
rection and often laughs at real calamities 
with wonderful courage. She has a fund of 
romance in her nature which has led her to 


10 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


the pass she now is in. She is clever, too, 
at introspection and analysis — of herself 
chiefly. She studies her own sensations 
and dissects her moods. Her selfishness is 
of the peculiar sort which should have kept 
her from marrying until she found the hun- 
dredth man who could appreciate her genius 
and bend it into nobler channels. Unfor- 
tunately she married one of the ninety-nine. 
She is not, perhaps, more selfish than many 
another woman, but her selfishness is differ- 
ent. She is mentally cross-eyed from turn- 
ing her eyes inward so constantly. 

She became engaged to Brandt—a man 
in every way worthy of her—and they loved ~ 
each other devotedly. Then during a quar- 
rel she broke the engagement, and he, being 
piqued by her withdrawal, immediately mar- 
ried May Lawrence, who had been patiently 
in love with him for five years, and who was 
only waiting for some such turn as this to 
deliver him into her hands. A poetic justice 
visits him with misery, for he still cares for 
Alice. May, however, is not conscious of 
this fact as yet. 

Alice, being doubly stung by his defection, 


I COME INTO MY KINGDOM II 


was just in the mood to do something des- 
perate, when she began to see a great deal 
of Asbury, fresh from being jilted by Sallie 
Cox. Asbury was moody, and confided in 
Alice. Alice was foolish, and confided in 
him. They both decided that their hearts 
were ashes, love burned out, and life a howl- 
ing wilderness, and then proceeded to ex- 
change these empty hearts of theirs, and to 
go through the howling wilderness together. 

Alice came to tell me about it. They had 
no love to give each other, she said sadly, 
but they were going to be married. I would 
have laughed at her if she had not been so 
tragic. But there is something about Alice, 
in spite of her romantic folly, (which she 
has adapted from the French to suit her 
American needs,) which forbids ridicule. 
Nevertheless I felt, with one of those sudden 
flashes of intuition, that this choice of hers 
was a hideous mistake. ‘The situation re- 
pelled me. But the very strangeness of it 
seemed to attract the morbid Alice. And it 
was this one curious strain of unexplained 
foolishness marring her otherwise strong 
and in many ways beautiful character which 


12 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


prevented my loving her completely and 
safely. Nevertheless, I cared for her enough 
to enter my feeble and futile protest; but it 
was waved aside with the superb effrontery 
of a woman who feels that she controls the 
situation with her head, and whose heart is 
not at liberty to make uncomfortable com- 
plications. I would rather argue with a 
woman who is desperately in love, to pre- 
vent her marrying the man of her choice, 
than to try to dissuade a woman from mar- 
rying a man she has set her head upon. 
You feel sympathy with the former, and you 
have human nature and the whole glorious 
love-making Past at your back, to give you 
confidence and eloquence. But with the 
latter you are cowed and beaten before- 
hand, and tongue-tied during the contest. 

So she became Alice Asbury, and these ~ 
two blighted beings took a flat. Before they 
had been at home from their honeymoon a 
week she came down to see me, and told me 
that she hated Asbury. 

Imagine a bride whose bouquet, only a 
month before, you had held at the altar, and 
heard her promise to love, honor, and obey 


I COME INTO MY KINGDOM 13 


a man until death did them part, coming to 
you with a confession like that. Still, if but 
one half she tells me of him is true, I do 
not wonder that she hates him. 

With her revolutionary, anarchistic com- 
pleteness, she has renounced the idea of 
compromise or adaptability as finally as if 
she had seen and passed the end of the 
world. ‘There is no more pliability in her 
with regard to Asbury than there is ina 
steel rod. How different she used to be 
with Brandt! How she consulted his wishes 
and accommodated herself to him! 

When a woman born to be ruled by love 
only passes by her master spirit, she be- 
comes an anomaly in woman —she makes 
complications over which the psychologist 
wastes midnight oil, and if he never dis- 
covers the solution, it is because of its very 
simplicity. 

All the sweetness seems to have left 
Alice’s nature. She keeps somebody with 
her every moment. That one guest cham- 
ber in her flat has been occupied by all 
the girls that she can persuade to visit her. 
Asbury dislikes company, but she says she 


14 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


does not care. She cannot keep visitors 
long, because as soon as they discover that 
they are unwelcome to Asbury, naturally 
they go home. 

Fortunately, Asbury does not care for 
Sallie Cox any more. When his vanity was 
wounded, his love died instantly. I think 
he is more in love with himself than he ever 
was with any woman. There are men, you 
know, whose one grand passion in life is for 
themselves. But Alice knows that Brandt 
still cares for her, and she feeds her roman- 
tic fancy on this fact, and has her introspec- 
tive miseries to her heart’s content. She is 
far too cool-headed a woman to do anything 
rash. Sometimes I think her morbid nature 
obtains more real satisfaction out of her 
joyless situation than positive happiness 
would compensate her for. She appears to 
take a certain negative pleasure in it. Their 
marriage is the product of a false civiliza- 
tion, and I pity them —at a distance — from 
the bottom of my heart. I am sorry for 
Brandt, too, for he honestly loved Alice and 
might have proved the hundredth man— 
who knows? 


I COME INTO MY KINGDOM 15 


I do not quite know whether to be sorry 
for May Brandt or not, for she made com- 
plications and made them purposely. She 
made them so promptly, too, that she pre- 
cluded the possibility of a reconciliation be- 
tween Alice and Brandt. If Brandt had re- 
mained single, I doubt whether Alice would 
have had the courage to form an engage- 
ment with any other man. She loved him 
too truly to take the first step towards an 
eternal separation. Women seldom dare 
make that first move, except as a decoy. 
They are naturally superstitious, and even 
when curiously free from this trait in every- 
thifig else, they cling to a little in love, and 
dare not tempt Fate too insolently. 

A woman who has quarrelled with her 
lover, in her secret heart expects him back 
daily and hourly, no matter what the cause 
of the estrangement, until he becomes in- 
volved with another woman. Then she lays 
all the blame of his defection at the door 
of the alien, where, in the opinion of an Old 
Maid, it generally belongs. 

If other women would let men alone, con- 
stancy would be less of a hollow mockery. 


16 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


(Query, but is it constancy where there is no 
temptation to be fickle?) Nevertheless, let 
“another woman” sympathize with an es- 
tranged lover, and place a little delicate 
blame upon his sweetheart and flatter him 
a great deal, and presto / you have one of 
those criss-cross engagements which turns 
life to a dull gray for the aching heart which 
is left out. 

If, too, when this honestly loving woman 
appears to take the first step, her actions 
and mental processes could be analyzed 
and timed, it frequently would prove that, 
with her quicker calculations, she foresaw 
the fatal effect of the “ other- woman” ele- 
ment, and, desirous of protecting her vanity, 
reached blindly out to the nearest man at 
her command, and married him with magnif- 
icent effrontery, just to circumvent humili- 
ation and to take a little wind out of the 
other woman’s sails. But could you make 
her lover believe that? Never. 

And so May Lawrence played the “ other 
woman ”’ in the Asbury tragedy. I wonder 
if she is satisfied with her rdle. A girl who 
wilfully catches a man’s heart on the re- 


I COME INTO MY KINGDOM shy g 


bound, does the thing which involves more 
risk than anything else malevolent fate could 
devise. 

On the whole, I think I am sorry for her, 
for she has apples of Sodom in her hand, 
although as yet to her delighted gaze they 
appear the fairest of summer fruit. 

2 


III 
MATRIMONY IN HARNESS 


‘“ What eagles are we still 
In matters that belong to other men; 
What beetles in our own!” 

THE more I know of horses, the more 
natural I think men and women are in the 
unequalness of their marriages. I never yet 
saw a pair of horses so well matched that 
they pulled evenly all the time. The more 
skilful the driver, the less he lets the discrep- 
ancy become apparent. Going up hill, one 
horse generally does the greater share of 
work. If they pull equally up hill, some- 
times they see-saw and pull in jerks on a 
level road. And I never saw a marriage in 
which both persons pulled evenly all the 
time, and the worst of it is, I suppose this 
unevenness is only what is always expected. 


MATRIMONY IN HARNESS 19 


Having no marriage of my own to worry 
over, it is gratuitous when I worry over 
other people’s. Old maids, you know, like 
to air their views on matrimony and bring- 
ing up children. Their theories on these 
subjects have this advantage —that they 
always hold good because they never are 
tried. 

There never was such an unequal yoking 
together as the Herricks’. Nobody has told 
me. ‘This is one of the affairs which has 
not been confided to me. Only, I knew them 
both so well before they were married. I 
knew Bronson Herrick best, however, be- 
cause I never used to see any more of Flos- 
sy than was necessary. 

To begin with, I never liked her name. I 
have an idea that names show character. 
Could anybody under heaven be noble with 
such a name as Flossy? I believe names 
handicap people. I believe children are 
sometimes tortured by hideous and unmean- 
ing names. But give them strong, ugly 
names in preference to Ina and Bessie and 
Flossy and such pretty-pretty names, with 
no meaning and no character to them. Take 


20 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


my own name, Ruth. If I wanted to be 
noble or heroic I could be; my name would 
not be an anomalous nightmare to attract 
attention to the incongruity. We cannot be 
too thankful to our mothers who named us 
Mary and Dorothy and Constance. What 
an inspiration to be “faithful over a few 
things” such a name as Constance must 
be! 

But Flossy’s mother named her—not Flor- 
~ ence, but Flossy. I suppose she was one of 
those fluffy, curly, silky babies. She grew 
to be that kind of a girl—a Flossy girl. It 
speaks for itself. I suppose with that name 
she never had any incentive to outgrow her 
nature. 

It came out on her wedding cards: 


‘* Mr. and Mrs. CHARLES FAY CARLETON 
request you to be present at the 
marriage of their daughter 
FLossy 
to 
Mr. BRONSON STuRGIS HERRICK.” 


The contrast between the two names, 
hers so nonsensical and his so dignified 
and strong, was no greater than that be- 


MATRIMONY IN HARNESS 21 


tween the two people. In truth, their names 
were symbolic of their natures. It looked 
really pitiful to me. 

I wondered if anybody besides Rachel 
English and me looked into their future 
with apprehension. Our misgivings, I must 
admit, were all for Bronson. 

Ah, well-a-day! It is so easy to feel sym- 
pathy for a man you admire, especially if he 
is strong and loyal, and does not ask or de- 
sire it of you. 

Flossy was one of those cuddling girls. 
She appealed to you with her eyes, and you 
found yourself petting her and sympathizing 
with her, when, if you stopped to think, you 
would see that she had more of everything 
than you had. She possessed a rich father, 
a beautiful house, and perfect health. Nev- 
ertheless, you found yourself asking after 
“poor Flossy,” and your voice commiser- 
ated her if your words did not. She inva- 
riably had some trifling ill to tell you of. 
She had hurt her arm, or scratched her hand, 
or the snow made her eyes ache, or she was 
‘tired. She never seemed at liberty to enjoy 
herself, although she went everywhere, and 


22 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


seemed to do so successfully in spite of her 
imaginary ills, if you let her enjoy herself by 
telling you of them. 

Everybody helped Flossy to live. Every- 
body protected and looked after her. There 
was some one on his knees continually, re- 
moving invisible brambles from her rose-leaf 
path. She didn’t know how to do anything 
for herself. She never buttoned her own 
boots. When her maid was not with her, 
other people put her jacket on for her, 
and carried her umbrella and buttoned her 
gloves. Men always buttoned her gloves, 
and her gloves always had more buttons, 
and more unruly buttons, than any other 
gloves I ever saw. But then I am elderly. 

I never knew Flossy to do anything for 
anybody. She never gave things away, but 
on Christmas and her birthdays she re- 
ceived remembrances from everybody. I 
used to make her presents without know- 
ing why or even thinking of it. Flossy’s 
name was on all the Christmas lists, and 
she used to shed tears over the kindness 
of her friends, and write the prettiest notes 
to them, so plaintive and self-deprecatory. 


MATRIMONY IN HARNESS 23 


Then they took her to drive, or did some- 
thing more for her. Flossy read poetry and 
cried over it. She wrote poetry too, and 
other people cried over that. 

When Bronson Herrick told me he was 
going to marry her, I wanted to say, “ No, 
you are not.” But I didn’t. I did not even 

seem to be surprised, for he is so proud 
he would have resented any surprise on my 
part. He told me about it of course, know- 
ing that I could not fail to be pleased. (His 
photograph is in that japanned box of mine. 
This smile on my face, Tabby, is rather sar- 
donic. Why is it that men expect an old 
sweetheart. to take an active interest in 
their bride-elect, and are so deadly sure that 
they will like each other ?) 

“ She is the most sympathetic little thing,” 
he said enthusiastically. ‘She reminds me 
of you in so many ways. You are very much 
alike.” 

“Oh, thank you, Bronson Sturgis Her- 
rick! I assure you I would cheerfully drown 
myself if I thought you were right about 
that,” I exclaimed mentally. 

He repeated over and over that she was 


24 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


“so sympathetic.” He meant, of course, 
that she had wept over him. Flossy’s tears 
flow like rain if you crook your finger at 
her, and tears wring the heart of a man like 
Bronson. ‘To think he was going to marry 
her! I just looked at him, I remember, as 
he stood so straight and tall before me, and 
said to myself, ‘‘ Well, you dear, honest, loy- 
al, clever man! You are just the kind of a 
man that women fool most unmercifully. 
But it’s nature, and you can’t help it. Go 
and marry this Flossy girl, and commit 
mental suicide if you must.” 

“ Sympathetic!” 

So he married her five years ago, and be- 
came her man-servant. 

When they had been married about a 
year, people said that Bronson was working 
himself to death. I, being an Old Maid, 
and liking to meddle with other people’s 
business, told him that I thought he ought 
to take a vacation. He said he couldn’t 
afford it. I was honestly surprised at that, 
because, while he was not rich, he was ex- 
tremely well-to-do, with a rapidly increasing 
law practice. And then Flossy’s father had 


MATRIMONY IN HARNESS 25 


been very generous when she married him. 
He was considerate enough to reply to my 
look. 

“You know I married a rich girl. Flossy’s 
money is her own. She has saved it—I 
wished her to save it, I wished it—and I am 
doing my level best to support her as nearly 
as possible in the way in which she has 
been accustomed to live. She ought to 
have an easier time, poor child.” 

So he did not take a vacation, and the 
summer was very hot, and when Flossy came 
home from Rye she found him wretchedly 
ill, and discovered that he had had a trained 
nurse for two weeks before he let her know 
anything about it. Then people pitied Flos- 
sy for having her summer interrupted, and 
Flossy felt that it. was a shame; but she 
very willingly sat and fanned Bronson for as 
much as an hour every day and answered 
questions languidly and was pale, and peo- 
ple sent her flowers and were extremely 
sorry for her. 

When Bronson became well enough to go 
away, as his doctors ordered, for a complete 
rest, Rachel English happened to go on the 


26 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


same train with them, and the next day I 
received a letter, or rather an envelope, 
from her, with this single sentence enclosed: 
“And if she didn’t make him hold her in 
his arms in broad daylight every step of the 
way, because the train jarred her back !” 

(Tabby, there is no use in talking. I must 
stop and pull your ears. Come here and 
let Missis be really rough with you for a 
minute.) 

There are some women who prefer a valet 
to a husband ; who think that the more me- 
nial are his services in public, the more appa- 
rent is his devotion. It is a Roman-chariot- 
wheel idea, which degrades both the man 
and the woman in the eyes of the specta- 
tors. I wrote to Rachel, and said in the 
letter, “One horse in the span always does 

most of the pulling, you know, especially 
uphill.” And Rachel wrote back, “‘ Wouldn’t 
I just like to drive this pair, though !” 

Bronson had his ideals before he was 
married, as most men have, concerning the 
kind of a home he hoped for. He always 
said that it was not so much what your home 
was, as how it was. He believed that a 


MATRIMONY IN HARNESS 27 


home consisted more in the feelings and 
aims of its inmates than in rugs and jardi- 
nieres. He said to me once, “‘ The oneness 
of two people could make a home in Sahara.” 

He was ambitious, too, feeling within him- 
self that power which makes orators and 
statesmen, but needing the approval and en- 
couragement of some one who also real- 
ized his capabilities, to enable him to do 
his best. He himself was the one who was 
sympathetic, if he had only known it. His 
nature responded with the utmost readiness 
to whatever appealed to him from the side 
of right or justice. 

He had noble hopes in many directions, 
hopes which inspired me to believe in his 
truth and goodness, aside from his capabili- 
ties for achieving greatness. His eagle sight, 
which read through other men’s shams and 
pretences; his moral sense, which bade him 
shun even the appearance of evil, not only 
-permitted, but urged him, seemingly, into this 
marriage with Flossy, by which he effectu- 
ally cut himself off from his dearest aspira- 
tions. One by one I have seen him relin- 
quish them, holding to them lovingly to the 


28 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


last. The hours at home, which he intend- 
ed to give to study and research, have been 
sacrificed to the petting and nursing of a 
perfectly well woman, who demanded it of 
him. His home life, where he had dreamed 
of a congenial atmosphere, where the cen- 
tripetal force should be the love of wife and 
children, merged into frequent journeys for 
Flossy—who would have been happy if she 
never had been obliged to stay in one place 
over a week—and a shifting of their one 
child Rachel into the care of nurses, be- 
cause Flossy fretted at the care of her and 
demanded all of Bronson’s time for herself. 

Thus was Bronson’s life being twisted and 
bent from its natural course. Was it a weak- 
ness in him? ‘To be sure he might have 
shown his strength by breaking loose from 
family ties, and, hardening his heart to his 
wife’s plaints, have carried out his ambitions 
with some degree of success. He did at- 
tempt this, nor did he fail in his career. He 
was called a fairly successful man. I dare 
say the majority of people never knew that 
he was created for grander things. But 
something was sapping his energy at the 


MATRIMONY IN HARNESS 29 


fountain-head. Was he realizing that he 
had helped to shatter his ideals with his 
own hand? 

I never am so well satisfied with my lot 
of single-blessedness as when I contemplate 
the sort of wife Flossy makes. That may 
sound arrogant, but this is a secret session 
-of human nature, when arrogance and all 
native-born sins are permissible. 

Flossy is perfectly unconscious of the 
spectacle she presents to the world. Ah, 
me! I know it is said, “ Judge not, that ye 
be not judged.” I might have made him 
just such a wife, I suppose. O heavens! no, 
Ishouldn’t. Tabby, that is making humility 
go a little too far. 


IV 
WOMEN AS LOVERS 


‘*In every clime and country 

There lives a Man of Pain, 

Whose nerves, like chords of lightning, 
Bring fire into his brain: 

To him a whisper is a wound, 
A look or sneer, a blow ; 

More pangs he feels in years or months 
Than dunce-throng’d ages know.” 

I HAVE had such a curious experience. I 
have been confided in, twice in one day. 
Two more bits out of other lives have been 
given to me, and it is astonishing to see how 
well they piece into mine. 

To begin with, Rachel English came in 
early. There is something particularly au- 
spicious about Rachel. She fits me like a 
glove. She never jars nor grates. When 
she is here, I am comfortable; when she is 
gone, I miss something. If I see a fine 
painting, or hear magnificent music, I think 


WOMEN AS LOVERS 31 


of Rachel before any other thought comes 
into my mind. One involuntarily associates 
her with anything wonderfully fine in art or 
literature, with the perfect assurance that 
she will be sympathetic and appreciative. 
She understands the deep, inarticulate emo- 
tions in the kindred way you have a right 
to expect of your lover, and which you are 
oftenest disappointed in, if you do expect it 
of him. If I were a man, I should be in 
love with Rachel. 

Her sensitiveness through every available 
channel makes her of no use to general so- 
ciety. Blundering people tread on her; 
malicious ones tear her to pieces. Rachel 
ought to be caged, and only approached by 
clever people who have brains enough to 
appreciate her. I should like -to be her 
keeper. But her organization is too closely 
allied to that of genius to be happy, unless 
with certain environments which it is too 
good to believe will ever surround her. She 
is so clever that she is perfectly helpless. 
If you knew her, this would not be a para- 
dox. Possibly it isn’t anyway. 

I do not say that Rachel is perfect. She 


32 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


would be desperately uncomfortable as a 
friend if she were. Her failings are those 
belonging to a frank, impulsive, generous 
nature, which I myself find it easy to for- 
give. Her gravest fault is a witty tongue. 
That which many people would give years 
of their lives to possess is what she has shed 
the most tears over and which she most 
liberally detests in herself. She calls it her 
private demon, and says she knows that one 
of the devils, in the woman who was pos- 
sessed of seven, was the devil of wit. 

Wit is a weapon of defence, and was no 
more intended to be an attribute of woman 
than is a knowledge of fire-arms or a fond- 
ness for mice. A witty woman is an anom- 
aly, fit only for literary circles and to be ad- 
mired at a distance. 

It is of no use to advise Rachel to curb 
her tongue. So tender-hearted that the sight 
of an animal in pain makes her faint; so 
humble-minded that she cannot bear to re- 
ceive an apology, but, no matter what has 
been the offence, cuts it off short and has- 
tens to accept it before it is uttered, with the 
generous assurance that she, too, has been 


WOMEN AS LOVERS 33 


to blame; yet she wounds cruelly, but uncon- 
sciously, with her tongue, which cleaves like 
a knife, and holds up your dearest, most pri- 
vate foibles on stilettos of wit for the pub- 
lic to mock at. Not that she is personal in 
her allusions, but her thorough knowledge 
of the philosophy of human nature and the 
deep, secret springs of human action lead 
her to witty, satirical generalizations, which 
are so painfully true that each one of her 
hearers goes home hugging a personal af- 
front, while poor Rachel never dreams of 
lacerated feelings until she meets averted 
faces or hears a whisper of her heinous sin. 
This grieves her wofully, but leaves her with 
no mode of redress, for who dare offer balm 
to wounded vanity? I believe her when she 
says she “never wilfully planted a thorn in 
any human breast.” 

She scarcely had entered before I saw 
that she had something on her mind. And 
it was not long before she began to confide, 
but in an impersonal way. 

There is something which makes you hold 
your breath before you enter the inner nat- 
ure of some one who has extraordinary 

3 


34 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


depth. You feel as if you were going to 
find something different and interesting, 
and possibly difficult or explosive. It is 
dark, too, yet you feel impelled to enter. 
It is like going into a cave. 

Most people are afraid of Rachel. Some- 
times I am. But it is the alluring, hyster- 
ical fear which makes a child say, ‘‘ Scare 
me again.” 

Imagine such a girl in love. Rachel is 
in love. She would not say with whom— 
naturally. At least, naturally for Rachel. 
I felt rather helpless, but as I knew that all 
she wanted was an intelligent sympathizer, 
not verbal assistance, I was willing to blun- 
der a little. I knew she would speedily set 
me right. 

“You are too clever to marry,” I said at 
a hazard. 

“That is one of the most popular of fal- 
lacies,” she answered me crushingly. “ Why 
can’t clever women marry, and make just as 
good wives as the others? Why can’t a 
woman bend her cleverness to see that her 
house is in order, and her dinners well 
cooked, and buttons sewed on, as well as 


WOMEN AS LOVERS 35 


to discuss new books and keep pace with 
her husband intellectually? Do you sup- 
pose because I know Greek that I cannot be 
in love? Do you suppose because I went 
through higher mathematics that I never 
pressed a flower he gave me? Do you im- 
agine that Biology kills blushing in a wom- 
an? Do you think that Philosophy keeps 
me from crying myself to sleep when I think 
he doesn’t care for me, or growing idioti- 
cally glad when he tells me he does? What 
rubbish people write upon this subject! 
Even Pope proved that he was only a man 
when he said, 
‘«* Love seldom haunts the breast where learning lies, 
And Venus sets ere Mercury can rise.’ 
Did you ever read such foolishness ?” 
“Often, my dear, often. But console 
yourself. A wiser than Pope says, ‘The 
learned eye is still the loving one.’”’ 
“Browning, of course. I ought not to be 
surprised that the prince of poets should be 
clever enough to know that. It is from his 
own experience. ‘Who writes to himself, 
writes to an eternal public.’ You see, Ruth, 
men can’t help looking at the question from 


36 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


the other side, because they form the other 
side. You might cram a woman’s head with 
all the wisdom of the ages, and while it 
would frighten every man who came near 
her into hysterics, it wouldn’t keep her from 
going down abjectly before some man who 
had sense enough to know that higher edu- 
cation does not rob a woman of her wom- 
anliness. Depend upon it, Ruth, when it 
does, she would have been unwomanly and 
masculine if she hadn’t been able to read. 
And it is the man who marries a woman of 
brains who is going to get the most out of 
this life.” 

“Men don’t want clever wives,” I said 
feebly. 
“Clever men don’t. Why is it that all 
the brightest men we know have selected 
girls who looked pretty and have coddled 
them? Look at Bronson and Flossy. That 
man is lonesome, I tell you, Ruth. He act- 
ually hungers and thirsts for his intellectual — 
and moral affinity, and yet even he did not 
have the sense—the astuteness—to select a 
wife who would have stood at his side, in- 
stead of one who lay in a wad at his feet. 


WOMEN AS LOVERS 37 


Oh, the bungling marriages that we see! I 
believe one reason is that like seldom mar- 
ries like. For my part I do not believe in 
the marriage of opposites. Look at Robert 
Browning and his wife. That is my ideal 
marriage. ‘Their art and brains were mar- 
ried, as well as their hands and hearts. It 
is pure music to think of it. And, to me, 
the most pathetic poem in the English lan- 
guage is Browning’s ‘ Andrea del Sarto.’ 

“Tsn’t it strange to see the kind of men 
who love clever women like you? You 
never could have brought yourself to marry 
any of them, expecting to find them conge- 
nial. They would have admired you in 
dumb silence, until they grew tired of feeling 
_ your superiority ; after that—what ?” 

“The deluge, I suppose. Ruth, I don’t 
see how a woman with any self-respect can _ 
marry until she meets her master. That is 
high treason, isn’t it? But it is one of those 
sentient bits of truth which we never men- 
tion in society. The man I marry must have 
a stronger will and a greater brain than I 
have, or I should rule him. J’ll never marry 
until I find a man who knows more than I 


38 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


do. Yet, as to these other men who have 
loved me—you know what a tender place a 
woman has in her heart for the men who 
have wanted to marry her. My intellect re- 
pudiated, but my heart cherishes them still. 
Odd things, hearts. Sometimes I wish we 
didn’t have any when they ache so. I feel 
like disagreeing with all the poets to-day, 
because they will not say what I believe. 
Do you remember this from Beaumont and 
Fletcher, 
“* Of all the paths that lead to woman’s love 
Pity’s the straightest ’ ? 

Men are fond of saying that, I notice, but 
I don’t think we women bear out the truth. 
I couldn’t love a man I pitied. I could 
love one I was proud of, or afraid of, but 
one I pitied? Never. It is more true to © 
say it of men. I believe plenty of girls ob- 
tain husbands by virtue of their weakness, 
their loneliness, their helplessness, their— 
anything which makes a man pity them. 
Pleasant thought, isn’t it, for a woman who 
loves her own sex and wishes it held its 
head up better! You may say that it is this 
sort who receive more of the attentions that 


WOMEN AS LOVERS 39 


women love, chivalry and tenderness and de- 
votion. But if all or any of these were in- 
spired by pity, I’d rather not have them. 
I would rather a man would be rough and 
brusque with me, if he loved me heroically, 
than to see him fling his coat in the mud for 
me to step on, because he pitied my weak- 
ness. Do you know, Ruth, I think men are 
a good deal more human than women. You 
can work them out by algebra (for they 
never have more than one unknown quan- 
tity, and in the woman problem there would 
be more «’s than anything else), and you 
can go by rules and get the answer. But 
nothing ever calculated or evolved can get 
the final answer to one woman — though 
they do say she is fond of the last word! 
We understand ourselves intuitively, and we 
understand men by study, yet we are made 
the receivers, not the givers; the chosen, 
not the choosers. It really is an absurd 
dispensation when you view it apart from 
sentiment, yet I, for one, would not have it 
changed. I should not mind being Cupid 
for a while, though, and giving him a few 
ideas in the mating line. 


, 


40 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


“JT think women are often misjudged. 
Men seem to think that all we want is to be 
loved. Now, it isn’t all that I want. If I 
had to choose between being loved by a man 
—the man, let us say—and not loving him 
at all, or loving him very dearly and not 
being loved by him, I would choose the lat- 
ter, for I think that more happiness comes 
from loving than from being loved.” 

“Why don’t you marry somebody?” I 
asked in an agony of entreaty, for fear all 
of this would be wasted on me, an Old 
Maid, rather than upon some man. She 
shook her head. 

“Tt needs a compelling, not a persuasive, 
power to win a woman. No man who takes 
me like this,” closing her thumb and fore- 
finger as if holding a butterfly, “can have 
me. ‘The one who dares to take me like 
this,” clenching her hand, “will get me. 
But he will not come.” 

Then I walked with her to the door, and 
she bent over me, and whispered something 
about my being a “blessed comfort” to her, 
and went away. Ah, Tabby, my dear, it is 
worth while being an Old Maid to be a 


WOMEN AS LOVERS 41 


blessed comfort to anybody. But I would 
just like to ask you, as a cat of intelligence, 
what in the world I did for her! 

Imagine some man making that girl care 
for himso much. For, of course, it is some- 
body. A girl does not say such things about 
the abstract man. 

I was in an uplifted state of mind all day, 
as I am always after a talk with Rachel, and 
when Percival came in the evening, I felt 
that I could deluge him with my gathered 
sentiment, and he would be receptive. Be- 
sides, Percival has a positive genius for 
understanding. I did not know it, however, 
this morning. I seldom know as much in 
the morning as I do at night. 

Percival approves of sentiment. He said 
once that a life which had principle and sen- 
timent needed little else, for principle was to 
stand upon, and sentiment was to beautify 
with. He said this after I had told him 
rather apologetically that I wished there was 
more sentiment in the world, because I liked 
it. Is it strange that I like Percival? You 
can’t help admiring people who approve of 
you. 


42 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


Percival is a genius. People in general 
do not recognize this fact. He is an inar- 
ticulate genius. Men feel that he is in some 
occult way different from them, yet they do 
not know just how. Nor will they ever take 
the trouble to study out a problem in human 
nature, either in man or woman, unless they 
are philosophers. 

Women care for Percival in proportion 
to their intuitions. You must comprehend 
him synthetically. You cannot dissect him. 
With generous appreciation and sympathetic 
encouragement, Percival’s genius would be- 
come articulate. To discover it he must 
needs marry—but he must wait for the hun- 
dredth woman. This, of course, he will not 
do. If he can find a Flossy, he will go 
down on his knees to her, when she ought 
to be on hers to him; metaphorical knees, 
in this case. 

I am very much afraid he has found her. 
He is in love. You can always tell when a 
man is in love, Tabby, especially if he is not 
the lovering kind and has never been trou- 
bled in that way before. The best kind of 
love has to be so intuitive that it often is 


WOMEN AS LOVERS" 43 


grandly, heroically awkward. Depend upon 
it, Tabby, a man who is dainty and pretty and 
unspeakably smooth when he makes love to 
you, has had altogether too much practice. 
Percival knows that he is in love—that is 
one great step in the right direction. But 
he is in that first partly alarmed, partly curi- 
ous frame of mind that a man would be in 
who touched his broken arm for the first time 
to see how much it hurt. Whoever she is, 
he loves her deeply and thinks she never can 
care for him. He did not tell me this. If 
he thought that I knew it, he would wonder 
how in the world I found it out. Women 
are born lovers. They have to do the bulk 
of the loving all through the world. I told 
Percival so. At first he seemed surprised ; 
then he said that it was true. I believe 
some men could go through life without 
loving anybody on earth. But the woman 
never lived who could do it. A woman must 
love something—even if she hasn’t anything 
better to love than a pug-dog or herself. 
“Why aren’t women the choosers ?” said 
Percival seriously. The same question twice 
in one day, Tabby. ‘ Whenever I think of 


44 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


understanding the question of love, I wish 
for a woman’s intuitions. Women know so 
much about it. They absorb the whole 
question at a glance. But, with so many 
different kinds of women, how is a man to 
know anything ?” 

I always liked Percival, but a woman 
never likes a man so well as when he ac- 
knowledges his helplessness in her partic- 
ular line of knowledge, and throws himself 
onher mercy. Mentally, I at once began to 
feel motherly towards Percival, and clucked 
around him like an old hen. He went on 
to say that men often are not so blind that 
they cannot see the prejudices and complex- 
ities of a woman’s nature, but they are not 
constituted to understand them by intuition 
as women understand. men. ‘“ The mascu- 
line mind,” he said, ‘‘is but ill-attuned to 
the subtle harmonies of the feminine heart.” 

I was secretly very much pleased at this 
remark, but I made myself answer as be- 
came an Old Maid, just to make him con- 
tinue without self-consciousness. If I had 
blushed and thanked him, he would have 
gone home. 


s 


WOMEN AS LOVERS 45 


“They set these things down to the nat- 
ural curiousness and contrariness of women, 
and often despise what they cannot com- 
prehend.” 

He answered me with the heightened 
consciousness and slight irritation of a man 
who has been in that fault, but has seen and 
mended it. 

“All men do not. Still, how can they 
help it at times?” 

Then, Tabby, I went a-sailing. I launched 
out on my favorite theme. 

“Men must needs study women. Often 
the terror with which some men regard 
these—to us—perfectly transparent com- 
plexities, could be avoided if they would 
analyze the cause with but half the patience 
they display in the case of an ailing trotter. 
But no; either they edge carefully away 
from such dangers as they previously have 
experienced, or, if they blunder into new 
ones, they give the woman a sealskin and 
trust to time to heal the breach.” 

I thought of the Asburys when I said that. 
But Percival ruminated upon it, as if it 
touched his own case. A very good thing 


46 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


about Percival is that he does not think he 
knows everything. It encourages me to 
believe in his genius. To rouse him from 
a brown-study over this Flossy girl, I said 
rather recklessly, 

“T should like to be a man for a while, 
in order to make love to two or three wom- 
en. I would do it in a way which should 
not shock them with its coarseness or starve 
them with its poverty. As it is now, most 
women deny themselves the expression of 
the best part of their love, because they 
know it will be either a puzzle or a terror 
to their lovers.” 

Percival was vitally interested at once. 

“Ts that really so?” he asked. ‘Do you 
suppose any of them withhold anything 
from sucha fear?” His face was so uplift- 
ed that I plunged on, thoroughly in the dark, 
but, like Barkis, “ willin’.” If I could be of 
use to him in an emergency, I was only too 
happy. 

“Men never realize the height of the ped- 
estal where women in love place them, nor 
do -they know with how many perfections 
they are invested nor how religiously wom- 


WOMEN AS LOVERS 47 


en keep themselves deceived on the subject. 
They cannot comprehend the succession of 
little shocks which is caused by the real 
man coming in contact with the ideal. And 
if they did understand, they would think 
that such mere trifles should not affect the 
genuine article of love, and that women sim- 
ply should overlook foibles, and go on lov- 
ing the damaged article just as blindly as 
before. But what man could view his favor- 
ite marble tumbling from its pedestal] con- 
tinually, and losing first a finger, then an 
arm, then a nose, and would go on setting 
it up each time, admiring and reverencing in 
the mutilated remains the perfect creation 
which first enraptured him? He wouldn’t 
take the trouble to fill up the nicks and 
glue on the lost fingers as women do to 
their idols. He wouldn’t even try to love it 
as he used to do. When it began to look 
too battered up, he would say, ‘ Here, put 
this thing in the cellar and let’s get it out 
of the way.’” 

Percival listened with specific interest, 
and admitted its truth with a fair-minded- 
ness surprising even in him. 


48 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


“Do you suppose it is possible for a 
man ever to thoroughly understand a wom- 
an?” he asked, with a retrospective slowness, 
directed, I was sure, towards that empty- 
headed sweetheart of his. 

“T really do not know,” I said honestly. 
“T think if he tried with all his might he 
could.” 

“Do you think—you know me better 
than any one else does—do you think / 
could, if I gave my whole mind to it?” 

“You, if anybody.” I answered him with 
the occasional absolute truthfulness which 
occurs between a man and a woman when 
they are completely lifted out of themselves. 
Something more than mere pleasure shone in 
his eyes. It was as if I had reached his soul. 

“Tf no man ever has been all that a wom- 
an in love really believes him, the best a 
man could do would be to take care that 
she never found out her mistake,” he said 
slowly. 

“Exactly,” I said; “you are getting on. 
It is only another way of making yourself 
live up to her ideal of you.” 

“Supposing after all, that the woman I 


WOMEN AS LOVERS re 


love will have none of me,” he said, uncon- 
sciously slipping from the third person to 
the first. 
“JT wouldn’t admit even the possibility 

if I were a man. I would besiege the fort- 
ress. I would sit on her front doorstep un- 
til she gave in. Don’t ask her to have you. 
Tell her you are going to have her whether 
or no,” I cried, thinking of Rachel’s words. 
He looked so encouraged that I am afraid 
I have sent him post-haste to the Flossy 
girl, and gotten him into life-long trouble. 
But I had gone too far. I quite hurried, in 
my accidental endeavor to shipwreck him. 

“Men do not understand these things, 
because they will not give time enough to 
them. Real love-making requires the pa- 
tience, the tenderness, the sympathy which 
women alone possess in the highest degree. 
Possibly she loves you deeply, only you do 
not believe it. Gauged by a woman’s love, 
many men love, marry, and die, without even 
approximating the real grand passion them- 
selves, or comprehending that which they 
have inspired, for no one but a woman can 
fathom a woman’s love.” 
4 


50 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


I couldn’t help going on after I started, 
for he was thinking of the other woman, 
and looking at me in a way that would 
have made my heart turn over, if I hadn’t 
been an Old Maid, and known that his look 
was not for me. 

Then he ground my rings into my hand 
until I nearly shrieked with the pain, and 
said, “God bless you!” very hoarsely, and 
dashed out of the house before I could 
pull myself together. JZ say so too. God 
bless me, what have I done? I’ve sent him 
straight to that Flossy girl. I feel it. I’ve 
smoothed out something between them, I 
have accidentally made him articulate, and 
articulation in such a man as Percival is 
overpowering. He is a murdered man, and 
mine is the hand that slew him. 

Tabby, old maids are a public nuisance, 
not to say dangerous. They ought to be 
suppressed. 

* * * * 

I wonder if he will burst in upon her with 

that look upon his face! 


Vv 
THE HEART OF A COQUETTE 
‘* Strange, that a film of smoke can blot a star!” 


He did. And the woman was—Rachel. 
Tabby, I never was better pleased with my- 
self in my life. I love old maids. I think 
that whenever they are accidental they are 
perfectly lovely. But whata risk I ran! 

I did not know a thing about it until I 
received their wedding-cards. It was just 
like Rachel not to tell me, and it was in- 
sufferably stupid in me not to use the few 
wits I am possessed of, and see how matters 
stood. But my fears and tremors were that 
Frankie Taliaferro would get him, so I have 
watched her all this time. Percival laughed 
almost scornfully when I told him this, and 
said I had been barking up the wrong tree. I 
_ retaliated by saying that if they had been or- 
dinary lovers, I never could have made such 


52 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


a mistake, and they took it as a great compli- 
ment. When I consider the general run of 
engaged people, I am inclined to agree with 
them. Everybody seems to think they are 
making an experiment of marriage, because 
they are so much alike. But, then, doesn’t 
every one who marries at all, Jew or Gen- 
tile, black or white, bond or free, make an 
experiment? I myself have no fear as to 
how the Percival experiment will turn out. 
Rachel says that they are so similar in all 
their tastes and ideals that if she were a 
man she would be Percival, and if he were 
a woman he would be Rachel. “Then you 
still would have a chance to marry each 
other,” I said frivolously. But she assent- 
ed with a depth of feeling which ignored my 
feeble attempt to be cheerful. ‘“ Yet,” she 
continued, “there is a subtle, alluring differ- 
ence in our thoughts; just enough to add 
piquancy, not irritation, to a discussion. I 
do not love white, and he does not love 
black, as so many husbands and wives do. 
We both love gray; different tones of gray, 
but still gray. It is very restful.” The Per- 
civals are not only restful to themselves, but 


eT ee ee vee 


THE HEART OF A COQUETTE 53 


to others. They used to be in the highly 
irritable, nervous state of those whose sen- 
sitive organisms are a little too fine for this 
world. I never objected to it myself, but I 
have said before that Rachel was of no use 
to ordinary society, and Percival was little 
better. When people failed to understand 
her, she retired into herself with a dignity 
which was mistaken for ill-temper. She is 
too refined and high-minded to defend her- 
self against the “slings and arrows of out- 
rageous ” people, although if she would, she 
could exterminate them with her wit. And 
some could so easily be spared. It seems, 
too, that she is great enough to be a target, 
so she is under fire continually. This, while 
it causes her exquisite suffering, is from no 
fault of her own—save the unforgivable one 
of being original. “A frog spat at a glow- 
worm. ‘Why do you spit at me?’ said the 
glow-worm. ‘Why do you shine so?’ said 


‘the frog.” And as to Percival—the man I 


used to know was Percival in embryo. He 
is maturing now, and is radiant in Rachel’s 
sympathetic comprehension of him. He re- 
fers to the time before he knew her as his 


54 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


“protoplasmic state,” as indeed it was. 
But there are a good many of us who would 
be willing to remain protoplasm all our 
lives to possess a tithe of his genius—you 
and I among the number, Tabby. You 
needn't look at me so reproachfully out of 
your old-gold eyes. You know you would. 

You have seen Sallie Cox, haven’t you? 
Then you know how it jarred my nerves to 
have her rush in upon me when my mind 
was full of the Percivals. 

Sallie has flirted joyously through life 
thus far, and has appeared to have about as 
little heart as any girl I ever knew. Sallie 
- is the sauce Piguante in one’s life—absolutely 
necessary at times to make things taste at 
all, but a little of her goes a long way. At 
least so I thought until to-day. 

“T’ve got something to tell you, Ruth,” 
she said, “so come with me, and we will 
take a little drive before going to cooking- 
school.” 

I went, knowing, of course, that she 
wanted to confide something about some 
of her lovers. 

“JT am going to be married,” she an- 


ied 
i hil heal 


THE HEART OF A COQUETTE 55 


nounced coldly. “It’s Payson Osborne 
this time, and I’m really going to see the 
thing through. It’s_rather a joke on me, 
because it commenced this way. I was 
sick of lovers, and some of the last had 
been so unpleasant, not to say rude, when I 
threw them over, that I thought I would 
_ take a vacation. So when I met Payson, I 
said, ‘What do you say to a Platonic friend- 
ship?’ It sounds harmless, you know, Ruth, 
and he, not knowing me at all, assented. 
If he had been a man who knew of my 
checkered career, he would have refused, 
suspecting, of course, that I was going to 
flirt with him under a new name. But, as 
I was serious this time, I knew it was all 
right. So we began. I suppose you know 
he is enormously rich, besides being so 
handsome, and there will not be a girl in 
town who won’t say I raised heaven and 
earth to get him; but I don’t mind telling 
you, Ruth—because you are such an old 
dear, and never are bothered with lovers (!); 
besides, it will do me good to tell it, and I 
know you will never betray me—that I nev- 
er cared for any man on earth except Win- 


56 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


ston Percival. You needn’t jump, and look 
as though the house was on fire. It’s the 
solemn truth, and I never dreamed that he 
cared for Rachel until he married her. Mind 
you, he never pretended to love me. It is 
every bit one-sided, and I don’t care if it is. 
I am glad that a frivolous, shallow-minded, 
rattle- brained thing like me had sense 
enough to fall in love with the most glori- 
ous man that ever came into her life. I 
shouldn’t have made him half as good a 
wife as Rachel does—I really feel as if they 
were made for each other—but he would 
have made a woman of me. I’m honestly 
glad he is so happy, and things are much 
more suitable as they are, for Payson is a 
thorough-going society man, and doesn’t ask 
much in a wife or he wouldn’t have me, and 
he doesn’t expect much from a wife or he 
couldn’t get me. 

Perhaps you don’t know that a girl who 
makes a business of wearing scalps at her 
belt never stands a bit of a chance with a 
man she really loves, for she is afraid to 
practise on him the wiles which she knows 
from experience have been successful with 


THE HEART OF A COQUETTE 57 


scores of others, because she feels that he 
will see through them, and scorn her as she 
scorns herself in his presence. She loses 
her courage, she loses control of herself, 
and, being used to depend on ‘ business,’ as 
actors say, to carry out her réle successfully, 
she finds that she is only reading her lines, 
and reading them very badly too. If you 
could have seen me with Percival, you would 
know what I mean. I was dull, uninterest- 
ing, poky—no more the Sallie Cox that other 
men know than I am you. He absorbed my 
personality. I didn’t care for myself or how 
I appeared. I only wanted him to shine 
and be his natural, brilliant self. I never 
could have helped him in his work. The 
most I could have hoped to do would have 
been not to hinder him. I would have been 
the gainer—it would have been the act of a 
home missionary for him to marry me.” 

She laughed drearily. 

“Tsn’t it horribly immoral in me to sit 
here and talk in this way about a married 
man? It’s a wonder it doesn’t turn the color 
of the cushions. If you hear of my having 
the brougham relined, Ruth, you will know 


58 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


why. Ruth, I am so miserable at times it 
seems to me that I shall die. I’d love to 
cry this minute—cry just as hard as I could, 

and scream, and beat my head against some- 
thing hard—how do you do, Mrs. Asbury ?— 
but instead, I have to bow from the windows 
to people, and remember that Iam supposed 
to be the complaisant bride-elect of the 
catch of the season. It is a judgment on 
me, Ruth, to find that I have a heart, when 
I have always gone on the principle that 
nobody had any. Yes—how-de-do, Miss Cul- 
pepper? excuse me a minute, Ruth, while I 
hate that girl, What has she done to me? 
Oh, nothing to speak of—she only had the 
bad taste to fall in love with the man I am 
going to marry. Writes him notes all the 
time, making love to him, which he prompt- 
ly shows to me—oh, we are not very honor- 
able, or very upright, or very anything good 
in the Osborne matrimonial arrangement. 
Anybody but you would hate me for all this 
I’ve told you, but I know you are pitying 
me with all your soul, because you know 
the empty-headed Sallie Cox carries with 
her a very sore heart, and that it will take 


THE HEART OF A COQUETTE 59 


more than Payson Osborne has got to give 
to heal it. I call him Pay sometimes, but 
he hates it. I only do it when I think how 
much he does pay for a very bad bargain. 
But he doesn’t care, so why should I? 

“Tt really does seem odd, when I look back 
on it, to see how easy it was to get him, when 
all the time I was perfectly indifferent to 
him, and received his attentions on the 
Platonic basis to keep him from making 
love to me. I really think I never had any 
one to care for me in so exactly the way I 
like, and to be so easy in his demands, and 
to think me so altogether perfect and charm- 
ing, no matter what I do. It was because 
I was absolutely indifferent to him. I nev- 
er cared when he came. I never cared when 
he went. Other lovers fussed and quar- 
relled and were jealous and disagreeable 


when I flirted with other men, but Payson 


never cared. He didn’t tease me, you know. 
And whenever he said anything, I could 
look innocent and say, ‘Is that Platonic 
friendship?” So he would have to sub- 
side. I know he thought some of my in- 
difference was assumed, for when he told 


60 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


me about Miss Culpepper he thought I 
would be vexed. I was vexed, but I had 
presence of mind not to show it. I only 
laughed and made no comment at all— 
asked him what time it was, I believe. 
Then when he looked so disappointed and 
sulky, I knew I was right, and I patted Sallie 
Cox on the head for being so clever—so 
clever as not to care, chiefly. There is noth- 
ing, absolutely nothing, you cannot do with 
a man who loves you, if you don’t care a 
speck for him. And the luxury of perfect 
indifference! Emotions are awfully wear- 
ing, Ruth. I wonder that these emotional 
women like Rachel get on at all. I should 
think they would die of the strain. Men 
are always deadly afraid of such women. 
I believe Payson wouldn’t stop running till 
he got to California if I should burst into 
tears and not be able to tell him instantly 
just exactly where my neuralgia had jumped 
to. No unknown waverings and quaverings 
of the heart for my good Osborne. There 
goes Alice Asbury again. I am dying to 
tell you something. You know why she 
hates me, and understand why she treats me 


THE HEART OF A COQUETTE 61 


so abominably? Well, Asbury gave her the 
same engagement ring he gave me, and she 
doesn’t knowit. Rich, isn’t it? Here we 
are at the cooking-school. I am so glad I 
can slam a carriage-door without being rude. 
It is such a relief to one’s overcharged feel- 
ings.” 

Tabby, dear, if your head ever spun round 
and round at some of the confidences I have 
bestowed upon you, I can sympathize with 
you, for, as I went into that class, my feel- 
ings were so wrenched and twisted that I 
was as limp as cooked macaroni. You will 
excuse the simile, but that was one of the 
articles at cooking-school to-day, and when 
the teacher took it up on a fork, it did ex- 
press my state of mind so exquisitely that I 
cannot forbear to use it. 

Sallie Cox! Well, 1 am amazed. Who 
would think that that bright, saucy, clever 
little flirt, who rides on the crest of the wave 
always, could have such a heart history? 
And Percival of all men! I wonder what 
he would say if he knew. I don’t know 
what to think about her marrying Payson 
Osborne. The last thing she whispered to 


62 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


me as we came out of cooking-school was, 
“Don’t be too sorry for me because I am 
going to marry him. Believe me, it is the 
very best thing that could happen to me.” 

I am very fond of the girl to-night. What 
a pity it is that everybody does not know 
her as she really is! No one understands 
her, and she has flirted so outrageously with 
most of the men that the girls’ friendship 
for her is very hollow. A few, of whom 
Alice Asbury is one, dare to show this quite 
plainly, and of course Sallie doesn’t like it. 
She pretends not to care for women’s friend- 
ship, but she does. She would love to be 
friendly with all the girls, but they remem- 
ber the misery she has made them suffer, 
and won’t have it. 

Still, there is no doubt that she is marry- 
ing the man most of them want, so that 
again she triumphs. But, unless I am much 
mistaken, even as Mrs. Payson Osborne it 
will take her a long time to recover her place 
with the women which she has lost by hav- 
ing so many of their sweethearts and broth- 
ers in love with her. 

Ah, Tabby, what a deal of secret misery 


THE HEART OF A COQUETTE 63 


there is in the world! Everybody will envy 
Sallie Cox and think that she is the luckiest 
girl, and Sallie will smile and pretend—for 
what other course is left to her, and who 
can blame women who pretend under such 
circumstances? Perhaps there are reasons 
just as good for many other pretenders in 
this world. Who knows? We would be 
gentler if we knew more. 

There will be other sore hearts besides 
Sallie’s at her wedding. I had heard be- 
fore that Miss Culpepper was quite desper- 
ate over Osborne, but, as she was a girl 
whom everybody thought a lady,I had no 
idea that she had gone so far as Sallie says. 
Osborne probably didn’t object to being 
made love to. A man of his stamp would 
not be over-refined. Strange, now, Sallie 
does not love Osborne herself, but she 
promptly hates every other girl who dares 
to doit. Aren’t girls queer? 

Then there are a score of men who will 
gnash their teeth for Sallie—so many men 
love these Sallie Coxes. 

Frankie Taliaferro, the Kentucky beauty, 
who is staying with her this winter, tells me 


64 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


that Sallie has had several dreadful scenes 
with discarded suitors—that one said he 
would forbid the banns, and another threat- 
ened to shoot himself if she really married 
Osborne. 

I wonder how many marriages there real- 
ly are where both are perfectly free to marry. 
I mean, no secret entanglements on either 
side, no other man wanting the bride, no 
girl bitterly jealous of her. I never heard 
of one—not among the people 7 know, at 
least. 

Oh, Tabby, think of all the fusses people 
keep out of who promptly settle down at 
the appointed time and become peaceful old 
maids. How sensible we were, Tabby, you 
and Missis. 

But doesn’t it seem to you that people 
marry from very mixed motives? I used to 
have an idea—when I was painfully young, 
of course—that they married because they 
were so fortunate as to fall in love with each 
other. Are you quite sure that foolish no- 
tion is out of your head too? 


VI 


THE LONELY CHILDHOOD OF A CLEVER CHILD 


‘Ts it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? . . . To 
be great is to be misunderstood.” 

I HAVE been away since early last sum- 
mer, and consequently never had seen Flos- 
sy’s new baby until the newness had worn 
off, and it had arrived at the dignity of a 
backbone, and had left its wobbly period far 
behind. I am in mortal terror of avery little 
baby. It feels so much like a sponge, yet 
lacks the sponge’s recuperative qualities, I 
am always afraid if I dent it the dents will 
stay in. You know they don’t in a sponge. 

As soon as I came home, of course I went 
to see Flossy’s baby, and was very much 
disconcerted to discover that she had named 
it for me. I was afraid, I remember, that 
she would want to name the first girl for 
me, but she did not. She named her after 

5 | 


66 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


Rachel. I had an uncomfortable idea, how- 
ever, that my name had been discussed and 
vetoed, by either Flossy or Bronson. But 
this time the baby is named Ruth, and I 
found that it was all Flossy’s doing. 

I was irritated without knowing why. I 
didn’t want anybody to know it though, and 
so I was vexed when Bronson said to me, 
“T couldn’t help it, Ruth.” There was no 
use in pretending not to understand. I 
could with some men, but not with Bronson. 
He is too magnificently honest himself, and 
uplifts me by expecting me to be equally so. 
Nevertheless I failed him in one particular, 
for I answered him in my loftiest manner, 
“T am not at all displeased. It is a great 
compliment, I am sure.” 

There is nothing so uncivil at times as to 
be cuttingly polite. What I said wasn't so 
at all. But a woman is obliged to defend 
herself from a man who reads her like an 
open book. 

Flossy does not like children, and poor 
little Rachel never has had a life of roses. 
Flossy says children are such a care and re- 
quire so much attention. 


LONELY CHILDHOOD OF A CLEVER CHILD 67 


“ Rachel was all that I could attend to, 
and here all winter I have had another one 
on my hands to keep me at home, and make 
me lose sleep, and grow old before my time. 
I don’t see why such burdens have to be put 
upon people. Children are too thick in this 
world any way.” 

She fretted on in this strain for some 
time, until Bronson looked up and said, 

“Don’t, Flossy. You don’t mean what 
you say. Do tell her the little thing is wel- 
come.” 

“1 do mean what I say,” answered. Flossy. 

Then, as Bronson left the room abruptly, 
Flossy said, 

*“ And I was determined to name her 
after you. Bronson didn’t want me to. 
He said you wouldn’t thank me for it, but 
I told him that Rachel Percival was quite 
delighted with her namesake.” 

IT hid my indignantly smarting eyes in the 
folds of the baby’s dress, as I held her up 
before my face, and made her laugh at the 
flowers in my hat. Flossy thought I was 
not listening to her with sufficient interest ; 
so she got up and crossed the room with 


68 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


that little stumble of hers, which used to be 
so taking with the men when she was a girl, 
and took Ruth away from me. 

There was a great contrast between the 
two children. Rachel Herrick is a shy 
child, with a delicate, refined face, lighted 
by wonderful gray eyes like Bronson’s, I 
do not understand her. She seems afraid 
of me, and I confess I am equally afraid of 
her. Even Rachel Percival does not get on 
with her very well, although she has bravely 
tried. The child spends most of her time 
in the library, devouring all the books she 
can lay her hands on. Little Ruth is a 
round, soft, fluffy baby, all dimples and 
smiles and good-nature, willing to roll or 
crawl into anybody’s lap or affections. A 
very good baby to exhibit, for strangers 
delight in her, and pet her just as people 
always have petted Flossy. Rachel stands 
mutely watching all such demonstrations, 
her pale face rigid with some emotion, and 
her eyes brilliant and hard. She is not a 
child one would dare take liberties with. 
No one-ever pets her. Flossy complains 
continually of her to visitors and to Bron- 


LONELY CHILDHOOD OF A CLEVER CHILD 69 


son, so that Bronson has gotten into the 
way of reproving her mechanically when- 
ever his eye rests upon her. Her very pres- 
ence, always silent, always inwardly critical, 
seems to irritate her parents. She was not 
doing a thing, but sitting sedately, with a 
heavy book on her lap, watching the baby, 
with that curious expression on her face ; 
but Flossy couldn’t let her alone. 

“ Baby loves her mother, doesn’t she? 
She is not like naughty sister Rachel, who 
won’t do anything but read, and never loves 
anybody but herself. Sister says bad things 
to poor sick mamma, and mamma can’t love 
her, can she? But mamma loves her pretty, 
sweet baby, so she does.” 

Rachel glanced at me with a hunted look 
in her eyes which wrung my heart. But, be- 
fore I could think, she slid down and the 
big book fell with a crash to the floor. She 
ran towards the baby with a wicked look on 
her small face, and the baby leaped and held 
out its hands, but Rachel clenched her teeth, 
and slapped the outstretched hand as she 
rushed past her and out of the room. 

Poor little Ruth looked at the red place 


70 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


on her hand a minute, then her lip quivered, 
and she began to cry pitifully. 

I instinctively looked to see Flossy gather 
her up to comfort her. It is so easy to dry 
a child’s tears with a little love. But she 
rang for the nurse and fretfully exclaimed, 

“Tsn’t that just like her! I declare I 
can’t see why a child of mine should have 
such a wicked temper. Here, Simpson, take 
this young nuisance and stop her crying. 
Oh, poor little me! Ruth, I’m thankful that . 
you have no children to wear your life out.” 

I dryly remarked that I too considered 
it rather a cause for gratitude, and came 
away. 

Poor little Rachel Herrick! Unlovely 
as her action was, I cannot help thinking 
that it was unpremeditated ; that it was the 
unexpected result of some strong inward 
feeling. She looked like one who was just- 
ly indignant, and, considering what Flossy 
had said, I felt that her anger was right- 
eous. That her disposition is unfortunate 
cannot be denied. She seems already to 
be an Ishmaelite, for whenever she speaks 
it is to fling out a remark so biting in its 


LONELY CHILDHOOD OF A CLEVER CHILD 71 


sarcasm, so bitter and satirical, that Flos- 
sy is afraid of her, and Bronson reproves 
her with unnecessary severity, because her 
offence is that of a grown person, which 
her childish stature mocks. Other children 
both fear and hate her. They resent her 
cleverness. They like to use her wits to 
organize their plays, but they never include 
her, for she always wants to lead, feeling, 
doubtless, that she inherently possesses the 
qualities of a leader, and chafing, as a he- 
roic soul must, under inferior management. 
Flossy makes her go out to play regular- 
ly with them every day, but it is a pitiful 
sight, for she feels her unpopularity, and 
children are cruel to each other with the 
cruelty of vindictive dulness; so Rachel, 
after standing about among them forlornly 
for a while, like a stray robin among a flock 
of little owls, comes creeping in alone, and 
sits down in the library with a book. She 
is the loneliest child I ever knew. If she 
cared, people would at least be sorry for 
her; but she seems to love no one, never 
seeks sympathy if she is hurt, repels all at- 
tempts to ease pain, and cures herself with 


72 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


her beloved books. I never saw any one 
kiss or offer to pet her, but they make a 
great fuss over the baby, and Rachel watch- 
es them with glittering eyes. I thought once 
that it was jealousy, and, going up to her, 
laid my hand on her head, but she shook it 
off as if it had been a viper, and ran out of 
the room. 

I had grown very fond of my namesake, 
and used to go there when Flossy was away, 
and sit in the nursery. The nurse told me 
once that Mrs. Herrick saw so little of the 
baby that it was afraid, and cried at the 
sight of her. I reproved her for speaking 
in that manner of her mistress, but she only 
tossed her head knowingly, and I dropped 
the subject. Servants often are aware of 
more than we give them credit for. 

Saturday before Easter I stopped at Flos- 
sy’s, but she was not at home. I left some 
flowers for her, and asked to see the baby, 
but the nurse said she was asleep. 

Easter morning I did not go to church, 
and Rachel Percival came early in the af- 
ternoon to see if I were ill. While she 
was here this note arrived by a messenger: 


LONELY CHILDHOOD OF ACLEVER CHILD 73 


‘“DEAR RuTH,—I know you will grieve for me 
when I tell you that our baby went away from us 
quite suddenly this morning, while the Easter bells 
were ringing so joyfully. They rang the knell of a 
mother’s heart, for they rang my baby’s spirit into 
Paradise. 

“‘T feel, through my tears, that it is better so, for 
she will bind me closer to Heaven when I think that 
she, in her purity, awaits me there. 

‘* Hoping to see you very soon, I am 

“Your loving FLossy. 

‘« P.S.—Bronson seems to feel the baby’s death to 

a truly astonishing degree. tee Fees 


I flung the note across to Rachel, and, 
putting my head down on my two arms, I 
cried just as hard as I could cry. 

Rachel read it, then tore it into twenty 
bits, and ground her heel into the frag- 
ments. : 

“Why, Rachel Percival! what is the mat- 
ter?” 

“She wasn’t even at home. She was at 
church. She must have been. She told me 
that Bronson was afraid to have her leave 
the baby, and wouldn’t come himself, but 
that she didn’t think anything was the mat- 
ter with it, and wouldn’t be tied down. Then 


74 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


such a note so soon afterwards! Ruth, what 
is that woman made of ?” 

We went together to Flossy’s. She came 
across the room to meet us, supported by 
Bronson. She stumbled two or three times 
in the attempt. Tears were running down 
Bronson’s face, and he wiped them away 
quite humbly, as if he did not mind our see- 
ing them in the least. I could not bear to 
watch him, so I slipped out of the room and 
went upstairs. 

“Tn here, ’m,” said the nurse; “and Miss 
Rachel is here too. She won’t move that 
far from the cradle, and she hasn’t shed a 
tear.” 

Ruth lay peacefully in her little lace crib, 
covered with violets, and beside her, rigid 
and white and tearless, stood Rachel. I 
was almost afraid of the child as I looked 
at her. She turned her great eyes upon 
me dumbly, with so exactly Bronson’s ex- 
pression in them that all at once I under- 
stood her. I knelt down beside her, and 
gathering her little tense frame all up in 
my arms, I began whispering to her, The 
tears rolled down her cheeks, and soon 


LONELY CHILDHOOD OF A CLEVER CHILD 75 


she was crying hysterically. Bronson came 
bounding upstairs at the sound, but she 
seized me more tightly around the neck 
and held me chokingly. I motioned him 
back, and succeeded in carrying her away 
to a quiet place, where I sat down with her 
in my arms, and made love to her for hours, 

I never heard a more pitiful story than 
she told me, between strangling sobs, of her 
hungry life. The child has been yearning 
for affection all the time, but has uncon- 
sciously repelled it by her manner. She 
said nobody on earth loved her except the 
baby, and now the baby was dead. 

“There is no use of your trying to make 
things different,” she said, “especially with 
mamma. She wouldn’t care if I was dead 
too. But papa could understand, I think, 
if he would only try to love me. But I love 
you—oh ! I love you so much that it hurts 
me. Nobody ever came and hugged me up 
the way you did, in my whole life. You have 
made things over for me, and I’ll love you 
for it till I die. Why is it that everybody 
gives mamma and the baby so much love, 
when they never cared for it, and I care so 


76 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID © 


much and never get a single bit? Nobody 
understands me, and every one—every one 
calls me bad. I’m not bad. I love plenty 
of people who can’t love me. I am not bad, 
I tell you!” 

She cried herself nearly sick, and then, 
exhausted, fell asleep, with her face pressed 
against mine. Thus Bronson foundus. He 
offered to take her, and I put her into his 
arms. Then I told him all that she had 
said, and asked him to hold her until she 
wakened, and give her some of the love her 
little heart was hungering for. He couldn’t 
speak when I finished, and I went down, to 
find Rachel bathing Flossy’s head with co- 
logne, and looking worn and tired. 

Percival came for Rachel, and one could 
see that the mere sight of him rested her. 
She told him all about it, in her wonderfully 
comprehensive way, and he felt the whole 
thing, and we were all very quiet and peace- 
ful and sad, as we drove home through the 
early darkness of that Easter day, 

They left me at my door, and I went in 
alone, with the memory of that grieving 
household—the lonely father, and the self- 


LONELY CHILDHOOD OF A CLEVER CHILD 77 


ish mother, and the unloved child—hallowed 
and made tender by the presence of the 
little dead baby, asleep under its weight of 
violets. 

I feel very much alone sometimes ; but 
the Percivals carry their world with them. 


Vil 
A STUDY IN HUMAN GEESE 
“YT am myself indifferent honest.” 


I HAVE just made two startling discov- 
eries. One is that I am not honest myself, 
and the other is that I detest honesty in 
other people. 

To-day I was sitting peacefully in my 
room, harming nobody, when I saw little 
Pet Winterbotham drive up in her cart and 
come running up to the door. I supposed 
she had come with a message from her sis- 
ter, and went down, thinking to be detained 
about ten minutes. 

It seems but a few years ago since Pet 
was in the kindergarten. I was surprised 
to see that she wore her dresses very long, 
and that she looked almost grown up. 

“My dear Pet,” I exclaimed, “‘ what is the 
matter?” 


A STUDY IN HUMAN GEESE 79 


“Oh, Miss Ruth, I am in such a scrape,” 
she answered me. “I hope you won’t think 
it’s queer that I came to you, but the fact is, 
I’ve watched you in church, and you always 
look as if you knew, and would help people 
if they would ask you to; so I thought I'd 
try you. 

“Ever and ever so long ago, when I was 
a little bit of a thing, and played with other 
children, and you and sister Grace went out 
together, I used to ‘choose’ you from all 
the other young ladies, because you wore 
such lovely hats, and always had on pearl- 
colored gloves. I suppose it is so long ago 
that you were a young lady and had beaux 
that you’ve forgotten it. But I know you 
used to have lovers, for I heard Mrs. Her- 
rick and Mrs. Payson Osborne talking about 
you once, and Mrs. Herrick said you seemed 
so tranquil and contented that she supposed 
you never had had any really good offers, or 
you would be all the time wishing you had 
taken one. And Mrs, Osborne spoke up in 
her quick way, and said, ‘Don’t deceive 
yourself so comfortably, my dear Flossy. I 
know positively that Ruth has had several 


80 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


offers that you and I would have jumped 
at.’ And then she turned away and laughed 
and laughed, although I didn’t see anything 
so very funny in what she said, and neither 
did Mrs. Herrick. 

“T do think Mrs. Osborne is the loveli- 
est person I know. She is my ideal young 
married woman. She always has a smile 
and a pretty word for every one, and young 
men like her better than they do the buds. 
Why, your face is as red as fire. I hope I 
haven’t said anything unpleasant. Mamma 
says I blunder horribly, but she always is 
too busy to tell me how not to blunder. 

“Now, I want to know which of these 
two men you would advise me to marry. 
I’ve got to take one, I suppose.” 

“ Marry!” I exclaimed, so explosively that 
Pet started. ‘Why, child, how old are 
you ?” 

“T’m nineteen,” she said, in rather an in- 
jured tone, “and I’ve always made up my 
mind to marry young, if I got a good enough 
offer. I hate old maids. Oh, excuse me. 
I don’t mean you, of course. I wouldn’t 
marry a clerk, you understand, just to be 


A STUDY IN HUMAN GEESE 81 


marrying. I’m not so silly. I have plenty 
of common-sense in other things, and I’m 
going to put some of it into the marriage 
question. Don’t you think I’m sensible ?” 

“Very,” I answered ; but I didn’t, Tab- 
by. I thought she was a goose. 

“Well now,” proceeded my young caller, 
settling her ribbons with a pretty air of im- 
portance, and looking at me out of the most 
innocent eyes in the world, “my sister 
Grace married Brian Beck because he had 
such a lot of money. But you know he is 
dissipated, and at first Grace almost went 
distracted. Then she made up her mind to 
let him go his own gait, and she has as 
good a time as she can on his money. His 
Irish name Brian is her thorn in the flesh, 
and he teases her nearly out of her wits 
about it. We have great fun on the yacht 
every summer. Brian is awfully good to me, 
and invites nice men to take with us; still, 
much as I like Brian as a brother-in-law, I 
shouldn’t care to have a husband like him. 
Now, I suppose you wonder why on earth I 
am telling you these things, and why I don’t 
tell one of the girls I go with.” 

6 


82 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


“Oh, no!” I exclaimed in protest. 

“Of course. I see you think it wouldn’t 
be safe. Girls just can’t help telling, to save 
their lives. Sometimes they don’t intend to, 
and then it’s bad enough. But sometimes 
they do it just to be mean, and you can’t 
help yourself. I have plenty of confidence 
in you though, and you don’t look as if 
you’d be easily shocked. You look as 
though you could tell a good deal if you 
wanted to. You're an awfully comfortable 
sort of a person. Now, let me tell you. I 
have two offers. One is from Clinton Frost, 
and the other is from Jack Whitehouse. 
You have seen me with Mr. Frost, haven’t 
you? A dark, fierce, melancholy man, with 
black eyes and hair, and very distinguished 
looking. 

“T think he has a history. He throws 
out hints that way. He is gloomy with 
everybody but me, and Brian will do noth- 
ing but joke with him. There is nothing 
Mr. Frost dislikes as much as to laugh or 
to see other people laugh. Brian calls him 
‘Pet’s nightmare,’ and threatens to give him 
ink to drink. 


ae ae igs MN id a 


A STUDY IN HUMAN GEESE 83 


“T believe Mr. Frost hates Brian. He 
says the name of our yacht, Hittie Magin, is 
unspeakably vulgar. Nothing pleases Brian 
more than to force Mr. Frost or Grace to 
tell strangers the name of it. Their mere 
speaking the words throws Brian into con- 
vulsions of laughter. Then, if people com- 
ment on it, he tells them that the name is of 
his wife’s selection, in deference to his Irish 
family. And Grace almost faints with mor- 
tification. Mr. Frost says he will give me a 
yacht twice as good as Brian’s. He adores 
me. He says I am the only thing in life 
which makes him smile.” 

I felt that I could sympathize with Mr. 
Frost on this point. 

“Then there’s Jack Whitehouse, Norris 
Whitehouse’s nephew. Mr. Norris White- 
house is a great friend of yours, isn’t he? 
Do you know, I never think of him as an 
‘eligible,’ although he is a bachelor. I 
should as soon think of a king in that light. 
He impresses me more than any man I ever 
knew. Don't you consider himodd? No? 
Ido. He is so clever that you would be 
afraid of him, if it wasn’t for his lovely man- 


84 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


ners, which make you feel as though what 
you are saying is just what he has been 
wanting to know, and he is so glad he has 
met some one who is able to tell him. Act- 
ually he treats me with more respect than 
some of the young men do. He makes me 
feel as if I were a woman, and he had a 
right to expect something good of me. I 
never said that to anybody before, but I can 
talk to you and feel that you understand 
me. I like to feel that people think there is 
something to me, even if I know that it isn’t 
much. Mrs. Asbury says that Mr. White- 
house is the courtliest man she knows. You 
know the story of the Whitehouse money, 
don’t you? Jack told it to me with tears 
in his eyes, and I don’t wonder at it. You 
know Jack’s father and mother died when 
he was very young. Norris was his father’s 
favorite, and the old gentleman made a most 
unjust will, leaving only a life interest in 
the property to Jack’s father; then it all 
went to his favorite younger son, Norris. 
Now, you know what most men would do 
under the circumstances. They would ac- 
knowledge the injustice of the will, but they 


A STUDY IN HUMAN GEESE 85 


would keep the money. This proves to me 
what an unusual man Mr. Norris White- 
house is, for he immediately made over to 
his little nephew Jack one half of the prop- 
erty—just what his father ought to have 
been able to leave him—and Jack is to 
come into that when he is twenty-five. 
Don’t you think that was noble? Jack 
worships him. He says no father could 
have been more devoted to an only son 
than his uncle Norris has been to him. He 
travelled with him, and gave up years of his 
life to superintending Jack’s education. 

“ Now, whoever marries Jack will really 
be at the head of that elegant house, for 
you know it hasn’t had a mistress since 
Jack’s mother died, years ago. I should 
like that, although I do wish more of the ex- 
pense was in furniture instead of in pictures 
and tapestries. But that is his uncle’s taste. 
_ “Poor Jack talks so beautifully about his 
young mother, whom he can scarcely remem- 
ber. He says his uncle has kept her alive 
to him. He is perfectly lovely with other 
fellows’ mothers, and with mine. He treats 
them all, he says, as he should like to have 


86 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


had others treat his mother. Of course it is 
only sentiment with him. If she had lived, 
he might have given her as much trouble 
as other boys give theirs. She must have 
been lovely. Mamma says she was. But 
I’d just as soon not have any mother-in-law 
to tell me to wrap up, and wear rubbers if it 
looked like rain. You know there isn’t a 
bit of sentiment in me. I’m practical. My 
father says if I had been a boy he would 
have taken me into business at fifteen. 
Jack thinks I am all sentiment. He says 
nobody could have a face like mine and 
not possess an innate love of the beautiful 
in art and poetry and all that. I have for- 
gotten just what he said about that part of 
it. But I know he meant to praise me. I 
didn’t say anything in reply, but I smiled 
to myself at the idea of Pet Winterbotham 
being credited with fine sentiment. 

“Jack is horribly young—only twenty- 
two—so he won’t have his money for three 
years, and Mr. Frost is thirty-nine. Jack 
has curly hair, and when he wears a white 
tennis suit and puts his cap on the back of 
his head and holds a cigarette in his hand, 


A STUDY IN HUMAN GEESE 87 


he looks as if he had just stepped out of 
one of the pictures in Zife. He looks so 
‘chappie.’ He is a good deal easier to get 
along with than Mr. Frost, and will have 
more money some day, although Mr. Frost 
has enough. Now, which would you take ?” 

“Why, my dear Pet,’ I said in an un- 
guarded moment, “ which do you love ?” 

I shrivelled visibly under the look of 
scorn she cast upon me. 

“T don’t love either of them. I’ve had 
one love affair and I don’t care for another 
until I make sure which man I’m going to 
marry.” 

“Can you fall in love to order?” I asked 
in dismay. 

“Not exactly. ‘To order!’ Why, no. 
Anybody would think you were having 
boots made. But it’s being with a man, 
and having him awfully good to you, and 
admiring everything you say, and having 
lots of good clothes, and not being in love 
with any other fellow, that makes you love a 
man. I’m sure from your manner that you 
like Jack Whitehouse the best, so I think 
Vl take him. You are awfully sweet, and 


88 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


not a bit like an old maid. I tell every- 
body so.” 

“Am I called an Old Maid?” I asked 
quickly. I could have bitten my tongue 
out for it afterwards. 

“Oh, yes indeed, by all the younger set. 
You see you belonged to Grace’s set and 
they are all married. It makes you seem 
like a back number to us, but you don’t look 
like an old maid. I suppose you can look 
back ages and ages and remember when 
you had lovers, can’t you? Or have you 
forgotten? I can’t imagine you ever getting 
love-letters or flowers or any such things. 
I hope I haven’t offended you. I am hor- 
ribly honest, you know. I-say just what I 
think, and you mustn’t mind it. Mamma 
says I am too truthful to be pleasant. But 
I like honesty myself, don’t you ?” 

And with that, Tabby, she went away. 

How terrible the child is! Now, Pet is 
one of those persons who go about lacerating 
people and clothing their ignorance, or their 
insolence, in the garb of honesty. 

“T am honest,” say they, “so you must 
not be offended, but is it true that your 


A STUDY IN HUMAN GEESE 89 


grandfather was hanged for being a pi- 
rate?” Or, “I believe in being perfectly 
honest with people. How cross-eyed you 
are !”’ 

This is why honesty is so disreputable. | 
When you say of a woman, “She is one of 
those honest, outspoken persons,” it means 
that she will probably hurt your feelings, 
or insult you in your first interview with 
her. 

I don’t like to admit it even to you, Tab- 
by, but I am horribly shaken up. After all 
these years of talking about myself to you 
as an Old Maid, and knowing that I am 
one, to hear myself called such, and to catch 
a glimpse of the way I appear to the on- 
coming generation, shakes me to the founda- 
tion of my being. Soon / shall be pushed 
to the wall, as something too worn out to 
be needed by bright young people. Soon / 
shall be one of the old people whom I have 
so dreaded all my life. Dear Tabby-cat! 
- You can remember when Missis received 
love-letters, can’t you? They are not all 
in the japanned box, are they? Do I seem 
old to you, kitty? Why, there is actually a 


go THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


tear on your gray fur. Dear me, what a 
silly Old Maid Missis is! 

You see, after all, I have not been honest, 
even with myself. And, just between you 
and me, I will say that I abominate honesty 
in other people. There! 


Bg ee 
A GAME OF HEARTS 
“Man proposes, but Heaven disposes.” 


Taspy, did you ever hear me speak of 
Charlie Hardy? No, of course not. Your 
mother must have been a kitten when I 
knew Charlie the best. He is a nice boy. 
Boy! What am I talking about?. He is as 
old as I am. But he is the kind of man 
who always seems a boy, and everybody 
who has known him two days calls him 
Charlie. 

Rachel Percival never thought much of 
him. She said he was weak, and weak- 
ness in a man is something Rachel never 
excuses. She says it is trespassing on one 
of the special privileges of our sex. Thus 
she disposed of Charlie Hardy. 

* Look at his chin,” said Rachel; “ could 
a man be strong with a chin like that ?” 


g2 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


“ But he is so kind-hearted and easy to 
get along with,” I urged. 

“Very likely. He hasn’t strength of 
mind to quarrel. He is unwilling, like most 
easy-going men, to inflict that kind of pain. 
But he could be as cruel as the grave in 
other ways. Look at him. He always is 
in hot water about something, and never 
does as people expect him to do,” 

“But he doesn’t do wrong on purpose, 
and he makes charming excuses and apol- 
ogies.”’ 

“ He ought to; he has had enough prac- 
tice,’ answered Rachel, with her beautiful 
smile. “He has what I call a conscience 
for surface things. He regards life from 
the wrong point of view, and, as to his al- 
ways intending to do right — you know the 
place said to be paved with good intentions. 
No, no, Ruth. Charlie Hardy is a danger- 
ous man, because he is weak. Through 
such men as he comes very bitter sorrow 
in this world.” 

That conversation, Tabby, took place, if 
not before you were created, at least in 
your early infancy—the time when your own 


A GAME OF HEARTS 93 


weight threw you down if you tried to walk, 
and when ears and tail were the least of 
your make-up.. 

All these years Charlie has never married, 
but was always with the girls. He dropped 
with perfect composure from our set to 
Sallie Cox’s—was her slave for two years, 
though Sallie declares that she never was 
engaged to him. “What's the use of being 
engaged to a man that you can keep on 
hand without ?” quoth Sallie. But Charlie 
bore no malice. ‘I didn’t stand the ghost 
of a show with a girl like Sallie, when she 
had such men as Winston Percival and those 
literary chaps around her. It was great 
sport to watch her with those men. You 
know what a little chatterbox she is. By 
Jove! when that fellow Percival began to 
talk, Sallie never had a word to say for her- 
self. It must have been awfully hard for 
her, but she certainly let him do all the 
talking, and just sat and listened, looking as 
sweet as a peach. Oh! I never had any 
chance with Sallie.” 

Nevertheless, he was usher at her wed- 
ding, then dropped peacefully to the next 


94 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


younger set, and now is going with girls of 
Pet Winterbotham’s age. 

I thoroughly like the boy, but I can’t im- 
agine myself falling in love with him. If I 
were married to another man—an indis- 
creet thing for an Old Maid to say, Tabby, 
but I only use it for illustration—I should 
not mind Charlie Hardy’s dropping in for 
Sunday dinner every week, if he wanted to. 
He never bothers. He never is in the way. 
He is as deft at buttoning a glove as he is 
amiable at playing cards. You always think 
of Charlie Hardy first if you are making up 
a theatre party. He serves equally well as 
groomsman or pall-bearer — although I do 
not speak from experience in either instance. 
He never is cross or sulky. He makes the 
best of everything, and I think men say that 
he is “an all-round good fellow.” 

I depend a great deal upon other men’s 
opinion of a man. I never thoroughly trust 
a man who is not a favorite with his own 
sex. I wish men were as generous to us 
in that respect, for a woman whom other 
women do not like is just as dangerous. 
And I never knew simple jealousy — the 


A GAME OF HEARTS 95 


reason men urge against accepting our ver- 
dict—to be universal enough to condemn a 
woman. ‘There always are a few fair-mind- 
ed women in every community—just enough 
to be in the minority—to break continuous 
jealousy. 

Be that as it may, the man I am talking 
about has kept up his acquaintance with 
Rachel and Alice Asbury and me in a des- 
ultory way, and occasionally he grows con- 
fidential. The last time I saw him he said: 

* Sometimes I wish I were a woman, 
Ruth, when I get into so much trouble with 
‘the girls. Women never seem to have any 
worry over love affairs. All they have to 
do is to lean back and let men wait on them 
until they see one that suits them. It is like 
ordering from a menu card for them to select 
husbands. You run over a list for a girl— 
oysters, clams, or terrapin—and she takes 
terrapin. In the other case she runs over 
her own list—Smith, Jones, or Robinson— 
and likewise takes the rarest. But she is 
not at all troubled about it. Marrying is 
so easy for a girl. It comes natural to 
her.” 


96 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


Tabby, I did wish that he knew as much 
of the internal mechanism of the engage- 
ments that you and I have participated in, 
by proxy, as we do—if he would under- 
stand, profit by, and speedily forget the 
knowledge. 

But, like the hypocrite I am, I only smiled 
indulgently at him, as if, for women, marry- 
ing was mere reposing on eider-down cush- 
ions, with the tiller ropes in their hands, 
while men did the rowing. I was not going 
to admit, Tabby, that the most of the girls 
we know never worked harder in their lives _ 
than during that indefinite and mysterious 
period known as “making up their minds.” 
You see I uphold my own sex at all hazards 
—to men. 

He was standing up to go when he said 
that, but there was something about him 
which led me to suspect that he was in a 
condition when he needed some woman to 
straighten out his affairs. I made no re- 
ply, which threw the burden of continuing 
the conversation upon him. I was in that 
passive state which made me perfectly will- 
ing to have him say good-night and go home 


A GAME OF HEARTS 97 


or stay and confess to me, just as he chose. 
I knew he needed me; a good many men 
need their mothers once in a while as much 
as they ever did when boys. There was 
something whimsically boyish about Char- 
lie as he leaned over the back of a tall 
chair and debated secretly whether or not 
he should confide in me. 

“Why don’t you ask me why I said that ?” 
he said. 

“Because I know without asking. You 
were induced to say it by what you have 
been thinking of all the evening. It sound- 
ed like a beginning, but really it was an 
ending.” 

He looked as though he thought me a 
mind-reader, but I fancy the knack of di- 
vining when people need a confidant is pre- 
ternaturally developed in old maids. 

“ How good you are, Ruth.” 

“ You men always think women are good 
when they understand you. But it isn’t 
goodness.” 

“No, you’re right. It’s more comfortable 
than goodness. It’s odd how you do it. 
May I tell you about it? You won't think 

7 


98 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


haif as well of me as you do now, but it 
needs just such women as you to keep men 
straight, and if you will give me your opinion 
Low I'll do as you say, even if it kills me.” 

I was afraid from that desperate ending 
that it was something serious, and it was. 
He made several attempts before he could 
begin. Finally he burst out with, 

‘“‘ Although you are the easiest person in 
the world to talk to, and I’ve known you 
always, it is pretty hard to lay this case 
before you so that you won’t think me a 
conceited prig. That is because you are a 
woman and can’t help looking at it from a 
woman’s standpoint. For a good many 
reasons it would be easier to tell it to some 
man, who would know how it was himself ; 
but you see I want a -woman’s conscience 
and a woman’s judgment, because you can 
put yourself in another woman’s place.” 

He grew quite red as he talked, and I 
waited patiently for him to go on, but gave 
him no help. 

“Well, here goes. If you hate me after- 
wards I can’t help it. I had no idea it 
would be so hard to tell you or I shouldn’t 


A GAME OF HEARTS 99 


have attempted it. But since you have been 
sitting there looking at me I am beginning 
to think differently of it myself, and I’m sure 
that, with all your kindness, you will be very 
hard on me, and tell me to accept the hard- 
est alternative. Now, Ruth, you'd better 
shake hands with me and say good-by while 
you like me, because you will think of me 
as another Charlie Hardy when I’ve fin- 
ished.” 

He actually held out his hand, but I 
folded mine together. 

“No,” I said, smiling, “I shall not bid 
you good-by until I really am through with 
you. Don’t look so discouraged. Come; 
possibly I may be a better friend to you 
than you think.” 

“You are awfully good,” he said again. 
I don’t know when I have so impressed a 
man with my extraordinary goodness as I 
did by listening to Charlie while he did all 
the talking. If I could have held my 
tongue another hour, he would have called 
me an angel. 

“Well, although you may not know it, I 
am engaged to Louise King. I always 


100 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


have been very fond of her, and when I 
found I couldn’t get Sallie, I was sure I 
cared as much for Louise as I ever could 
care for anybody, and I was perfectly sat- 
isfied with her—thought she would make 
me an awfully good wife, and all that. But 
while Miss Taliaferro was up here visiting 
Sallie, I was with her a good deal, and the 
first thing I knew we were dead in love with 
each other. You know we were both in Sal- 
lie’s wedding-party, and I tell you, Ruth, to 
stand up at the altar with a girl he is already 
half in love with, plays the very deuce with 
aman. Kentucky girls are all pretty, I sup- 
pose—everybody says so, and you have to 
make believe you think so whether you do or 
not; but this one—you know her? Isn’t she 
the prettiest thing you ever saw? Well, of 
course she didn’t know I was engaged, and 
I kept putting off telling her, until the first 
thing I knew I was letting her see how 
much I thought of her. I don’t suppose it 
was at all difficult to see, but girls are keen 
on such subjects, and a man can’t be in 
love with one more than a week before 
she knows more about it than he does. 


: A GAME OF HEARTS IOI 


Then, after she told me that she loved me, 
how could I tell her that, in spite of what 
I had said, I was engaged to another girl ? 
Wouldn’t she have thought I was a rascal? 
No; I had to let her go home thinking 
that, if we were not already engaged, we 
should be some time, and I went part way 
with her, and--it was a mean trick to play, 
but the nonsensical things that unthinking 
people do precipitate affairs which perhaps 
without their means might never fully de- 
velop. Brian Beck heard that I was going 
a few miles with her, and he and Sallie 
and Payson came down to the train to see 
us off. Just as we pulled out of the sta- 
tion, Brian made the most frantic signs for 
me to open the window, and when I did 
so, he threw a tissue-paper package at me. 
Frankie and I both made an effort to catch 
it. Of course it burst when we touched it, 
and a good pound of rice was scattered 
all over us. You never saw such a sight. 
It flew in every direction ; her hat and my 
hair were full of it. Some went down my 
collar. Of course everybody in the car 
roared and—well, I’m not done blushing at 


102 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


it yet. Frankie took it much better than I, 
and only laughed at it. But I—I felt more 
like crying. I saw instantly how it compli- 
cated things. It was a nail driven into my 
coffin. 

‘“We had no more than settled down from 
that and were just having a good little talk, — 
after the passengers had stopped looking 
at us, when the porter appeared, bringing a 
basket of white flowers with two turtle-doves 
suspended from the handle, and Brian Beck’s 
card on it. I wish you could have heard the 
people laugh. I declare to you, Ruth, when 
I saw that great white thing coming and 
knew what it meant, it looked as big as a 
billiard-table to me. I was going to pay the 
fellow to take it out again, but no—Frankie 
wanted it. She made me put it down on 
the opposite seat and there it stood. Those 
sickening birds were too much for me, so I 
jerked them off and threw them out of the 
window, conscious that my face was very 
red and that I was amusing more people 
than I had bargained for. 

“* When the time came for me to get off and 
take the train back, Frankie implored me to 


A GAME OF HEARTS 103 


go on with her, urging how strange it would 
look to people, who all thought we were mar- 
ried, to see me disappear and have her go on 
alone. I railed at the idea, but she was in 
earnest, and when I told her positively that 
I couldn’t—thinking more, I must admit, of 
the state of my affairs than of hers—she be- 
gan to cry under her veil. ‘That settled it. 
Of course I couldn’t stand it to see the girl 
I loved cry, so I went home with her, fell 
deeper in love every minute I was there, and 
came away feeling like a cur because I had 
not spoken to her father. Her people met 
me in the cordial, honest manner of those 
who have faith in mankind, but I couldn’t 
look them in the face without flinching. 
“Since I came back, of course, I’ve been 
visiting Louise as usual. I told her all 
about the rice and flowers, thinking that 
if she quarrelled with me about the af- 
fair she would break off the engagement. 
But she only laughed and said it served me 
right for flirting with every girl that came 
along, and didn’t even reproach me. She 
has absolute faith in me. She doesn’t be- 
lieve I could sink so low as I have, any 


104 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


more than she could. She has idealized me 
until I don’t dare to breathe for fear of de- 
stroying the illusion. She thinks that I love 
her in the way she loves me, but I couldn’t. 
It isn’t in me, Ruth. I don’t even love 
Frankie that way. To tell the truth, Louise 
is too good for me. She is magnificent, but 
I am rather afraid of her. She has so many 
ideals and is so intense. Her faith in me 
makes me shiver. I am not a bit comfort- 
able with her. I do not even understand 
how she can love me so much. I am noth- 
ing extraordinary, but if you knew the way 
she treats me, you would think I was Achilles 
or some of those Greek fellows. She has re- 
fused better and richer men than I. Nor- 
ris Whitehouse has loved her all her life, 
and you know what a splendid man he is, 
but Louise ridicules the idea of ever car- 
ing for anybody but me. She is so per- 
fect that there is absolutely no flaw in her 
for me to recognize and feel friendly with. 
She reads me like a book, but I am less 
acquainted with her than I was before we 
were engaged. She says such beautiful 
things to me sometimes, things that are 


A GAME OF HEARTS 105 


far beyond my comprehension, and she can 
get so uplifted that I feel as if I never 
had met her. There’s no use in talking; 
after a girl falls in love with a man she 
often ceases to be the girl he courted.” 

I recalled what I had said-to Percival— 
“Often a woman denies herself the expres- 
sion of the best part of her love, for fear 
that it will be either a puzzle or a terror to 
her lover.”” Such a saying belonged to Per- 
cival. I shouldn’t think of repeating it to 
Charlie, for he could not comprehend it. I 
should puzzle him as much as Louise did. It 
made me heartsick. How could even Char- 
lie Hardy so persistently misunderstand the 
grandeur of Louise King? Yet how could 
such a glorious girl imagine herself in love 
with nice, weak, agreeable Charlie Hardy? 

Louise is a younger, handsomer, more 
impetuous, less clever edition of Rachel Per- 
cival; but she is of that order. She is less 
concentrated and more emotional than Ra- 
chel. I did not quite know how a great 
sorrow would affect Louise. Rachel would 
use it as a stepping-stone towards heaven. 

I have seen a young, untried race-horse 


106. THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


with small, pointed, restless ears; with deli- 
cate nostrils where the red blood showed ; 
with full, soft eyes where fire flashed ; with 
a satin skin so thin and glossy that even 
the lightest hand would cause it to quiver 
to the touch; where pride and fire and royal 
blood seemed to urge a trial of their powers ; 
and I have thought: “You are capable of 
passing anything on the track and coming 
under the wire triumphant and victorious ; 
or you might fulfil your prophecy equally 
well by falling dead in your first heat, with 
the red blood gushing from those thin nos- 
trils. We can be sure of nothing until you 
are tried, but it is a quivering delight to 
look at you and to share your impatience 
and to wonder what you will do.” 
Occasionally I see women who affect me 
in the same way—idealists, capable of be- 
ing wounded through their sensitiveness by 
things which we ordinary mortals accept 
philosophically ; capable also of greater 
heights of happiness and lower depths of 
misery, but of suffering most through being 
misunderstood. To this class Rachel and 
Louise ‘belong. Rachel, in Percival, has 


A GAME OF HEARTS 107 


reached a haven where she rides at anchor, 
sheltered from such storms as had hitherto 
almost engulfed her, and growing more he- 
roically beautiful in character day by day. 
Poor Louise is still at sea, with a great 
storm brewing. How hard, how terribly 
hard, to talk to Charlie Hardy about her, 
when, after the solemnity of an engagement 
tie between them, he was capable of mis- 
understanding, not only her, but the whole 
situation so blindly! But what a calamity 
it would be if Louise should marry him! 

“Go on, Ruth. Say something, do. I 
imagine all sorts of things while you just 
sit there looking at me so solemnly. I real- 
ize that I am in a tight place. I did hope 
that you could see some way out of it for 
me; but I know, by the way you act, that 
you think I ought to give up Frankie—dear 
little girl !—and marry Louise, and by Jove! 
if you say it’s the handsome thing to do, I’ll 
do it.” 

This still more effectually closed my lips. 
He so evidently thought that he was being 
heroic. He added rather reluctantly, “I 
must say that I suppose Frankie Taliaferro 


108 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


would get over it much more easily than 
Louise could.” 

“Charlie,” I said slowly, “ you don’t mean 
to be, but you are too conceited to live. I 
wonder that you haven’t died of conceit be- 
fore this.” 

Charlie’s blond face flushed and he looked 
deeply offended. 

“Conceited !” he burst out. “Why, Ruth, 
there isn’t a fellow going who has a worse 
opinion of himself than I have. I don’t see 
what either of those girls sees in me to love, 
I tell you. I am not proud of it. I wish 
to Heaven they didn't love me. J haven’t 
made them.” 

“*Haven’t made them’! Yes, you have. 
You are just the kind of man who does. 
You say pretty things even to old women, 
and bring them shawls and put footstools 
under their feet with the air of a lover. And 
if you only hand a woman an ice you look 
unutterable things. You have a dozen girls 
at a time in that indefinite state when three 
words to any one of them would engage 
you to her, and she would think you had 
deliberately led up to it; whereas all the 


A GAME OF HEARTS 109 


past had been idle admiration on your part, 
and it was a rose in her hair or a moment 
in the conservatory that upset you, and 
there you are. Oh, these girls, these girls, 
who believe every time a man at a ball says 
he loves them that he means it! Why can’t 
you be satisfied to have some of them 
friends, and not all sweethearts ?” 

“Tt can’t be done. I’ve tried and I know. 
Sallie tried it and it married her off—a thing 
not one of her flirtations could have accom- 
plished. This is the way it goes. You ar- 
range with a girl not to have any nonsense, 
but just to be good friends. You take her 
to the theatre, drive with her, dance with 
her. Soon her chaperon begins to eye you 
over. Fellows at the club drop a remark 
now and then. You explain that you are 
only friends, and they wink at you and you 
feel foolish. Next time they see you with 
her, they look knowing, and you see, to your 
horror, that the girl is blushing. Evidently 
she is under fire too. Still, you keep it up. 
She makes a better comrade than any of the 
men. You feel that you are out of mischief 
when you are with her. She keeps you alert. 


IIO THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


You never are bored, but really you are not 
as fond of her as you were of your college 
chum even. She treats you a trifle, just 
a trifle, differently from all the other men. 
This goes to your head. You begin to make 
a little difference.yourself. You take her 
hand when you say good-night, just as you 
would one of the men. But it is not the 
same. The girl has needles or electricity 
in her hand. You can’t let go. You begin 
to feel that friendship, too, can be danger- 
ous. Next day you send her flowers, with 
some lines about the delights of friendship. 
She accepts both beautifully, but you have 
a guilty feeling that you did it to remind 
her. She does not seem to understand that 
there had been any necessity. Still, you feel 
rather mean, and to make up for it you try 
to atone by your manner. She is looking 
perfectly lovely. She wears white. You 
particularly like white. She knows it. You 
think perhaps she wore it to please you. 
ffow pretty she is! You lose your head 
a little and say something. She looks inno- 
cent and surprised. She ‘thought we were 
just friends. Surely,’ she says, ‘you have 


A GAME OF. HEARTS Iit 


said so often enough. Whychange? Friends 
are so much more comfortable.’ She wants 
to ‘stay a friend.’ You are miserable at the 
idea, although that morning it was just what 
you wanted. You were even afraid she 
would think differently. What an ass a 
man can be! You fling discretion to the 
winds and tell her—you tell her—well, you 
go home engaged to her. That’s how a 
friendship ends. Bah!” 

“A realistic recital. From hearsay, of 
course! The next day the man wishes he 
were well out of it, I suppose ?” 

“Not quite so soon as that, but soon 
enough.” 

“ Ah, I wish you knew, Charlie Hardy, 
how all this sounds even to such a good 
friend of yours as Iam. It is such men as 
you who lower the standard of love and of 
men in general. Do you suppose a girl who 
has had an encounter with you, and seen 
how trifling you are, can have her first beau- 
tiful faith to give to the truly grand hero 
when he comes? No; it has been bruised 
and beaten down by what you call ‘a lit- 
tle flirtation,’ and possibly her unwillingness 


112 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


to trust a second time may force her true 
lover into withdrawing his suit. How dare 
men and women trifle with the Shekinah 
of their lives? And when it has been 
dulled by abuse, what a pitiful Shekinah it 
appears to the one who approaches it rev- 
erently, confidently expecting it to be the 
uncontaminated holy of holies! It is this 
sort of thing which makes infidels about 
love.” 

Charlie began to look sulky, feeling, I sup- 
pose, that I was piling the sins of the uni- 
verse on to his already burdened shoulders. 

“‘T dare say you are right, but what am I 
to do?” 

“There is only one thing for you to do, 
but I know you won't do it.” 

“Yes, I will. Only try me,” he said, 
brightening up. 

“You must go and tell Louise that you 
are in love with Frankie Taliaferro.” 

“Tell Louise? Why, Ruth, it would kill 
her. You don’t know her. She wouldn’t 
let me off. You don’t know how a girl in 
love feels. Ruth, were you ever in love?” 

“That is not a pertinent question,” I said, 


A GAME OF HEARTS 113 


“Tt comes quite near being the other thing. 
But let me tell you, Charlie Hardy, I know 
Louise King, and it won’t kill her. You know 
‘men have died and worms have eaten them, 
but not for love.’ That might be said of 
women.” (I didn’t know, Tabby, whether it 
- might or might not. I couldn't afford to let 
him see my doubts, if I had any.) “We 
don’t die as easily as you men seem to 
think.” 

“ But is this your view of what is right ?” 
he asked. “I was sure you would counsel 
the other. I've been fortifying myself to 
give Frankie up and marry Louise, and, 
with all due respect to you, I must say that 
I think you are wrong here. You must re- 
member that my honor is involved.” 

“ Bother your honor!” I cried explosively. 
Charlie seemed rather pleased than other- 
wise at my inelegance. “Iam tired to death 
of hearing men fall back on nonsense about 
their honor. I notice they seldom feel called 
upon to refer to it unless they are involved 
in something disreputable.” 

Charlie straightened up at this and set- 
tled his coat with an indignant jerk. 

8 


II4 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


“J hardly think,” he began stiffly, “ that 
I am involved in anything disreputable in 
being engaged to Miss King.” 

“What are a man’s debts of honor?” I 
went on with growing excitement. ‘ Gam- 
ing debts and things he would scarcely care 
to explain to the public at large. Your 
honor is involved in this, is it? And you 
must save your honor at all hazards, no 
matter who goes to the wall in the process! 
I suppose if you made the rash vow that, if 
your horse won the race, you would cut your 
mother’s head off, while you were still in the 
flush of victory, you would seize your bowie- 
knife and go to work! No? Oh, yes, Char- 
lie. Your honor, as you call it, is involved. 
I insist upon it. You must do it. Oh, I 
am going too far, am I? Not one step fur- 
ther than men go in the mire whither their 
honor leads them. Debts of honor, indeed! 
Debts of dishonor I callthem. So do most 
women.” 

“Yes, but, Ruth,” interrupted Charlie un- 
easily, “an engagement is different. I don’t 
dispute what you say in regard to gambling 
debts—” 


A GAME OF HEARTS II5 


“You can’t,” I murmured rebelliously. 

“but a man can’t, with any decency, ask 
a girl to release him when he has sought 
her out and asked her to marry him.” 

“Perhaps not with decency. But it is a 
place where this precious honor of yours 
might come into play. It would at least be 
honorable.” 

“There isn’t a man who would agree 
with you,” he cried. 

“Nor is there a woman who would 
agree with you,” I retorted. But both of 
us stretched things a little at this point. 

He thought over the situation for a few 
minutes, then said, 

“You understand that, in my opinion, 
Louise loves me the bes‘.” 

“The best—yes. For that very reason 
you must not marry her. O Charlie! try 
to understand,” I pleaded. “She must 
love the best when she loves at all. She 
has loved the best in you, until she has put 
it out of your reach ever to attain to it. It 
would not be fair to the girl, it would be 
robbing her, to accept all this beautiful love 
for you, and give her in return—your love 


116 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


for another girl. Do you suppose for an 
instant that you could continue to deceive 
her after you were married? Supposing 
she found out afterwards, then what? She 
might die of that. I cannot say. It would 
be enough to kill her. But not if you are 
honest and manly enough to tell her in time 
to save her self-respect. You are powerless 
to touch it now. You could kill it if 7s 
were married.” 

“Honest and manly enough to confess 
myself a rascal? I don’t see where it would 
come in,” he replied gloomily. 

“It is the nearest approach to it which 
lies in your power.” 

“Tf the girls’ places were only reversed 
now! I could tell,Frankie that I had been 
false to our engagement and had fallen in 
love with Louise. She would know how it 
was herself. But Louise couldn’t compre- 
hend such things. I believe she has been 
as true to me, even in thought, as if she had 
been my wife. How can I tell her?” 

“The more you say, the plainer you make 
it your duty. I say, how can you not tell her?” 

“T might go away for a year and not let 


A GAME OF HEARTS II7 


her know and not write to her. Then she 
would know without my having to tell her.” 

“You wouldn’t stand it if a man called 
you acoward. Don’t try my woman’s friend- 
ship for you too far. You insult me by of- 
fering such a suggestion.” 

“Gently, gently, Ruth. I beg your par- 
don.” (Rachel was right in saying he would 
not quarrel. I wished he would. - I never 
wanted to quarrel so much in my life.) 

“T am a coward,” he broke down at last. 
“T'll spare you the trouble of saying so. 
But oh, Ruth, you don’t know how I dread 
a scene!» You go and tell her. Ican't. I 
couldn’t even write it.” 

“ How unselfish you are! Spare yourself 
at all hazards, Charlie, for of course it was 
not your fault that things got into such a 
state.” 

**Oh, Ruth, don’t!” 

“Well, I won’t. But do you realize how 
I should insult her if I went to her? It’s 
bad enough for you, the man she loves, to 
tell her. From any one else it would be un- 
forgivable. Do as you like. You prom- 
ised to follow my advice. Take it and do 


118 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


as you will with it. But I will guarantee 
the result if you will do as I say. Come, 
Charlie. One hour, and it will all be over, 
and you can marry Frankie.” 

It was like getting him into a dentist’s 
chair. I felt a wholesome self-contempt as 
I thus sugar-coated his pill, but he was so 
abject in his misery. 

Charlie brightened up perceptibly at the 
alluring prospect. He shut his eyes to the 
dark path which led to happiness, and was 
revelling in its glory. 

“ Ruth, you dear thing! I don't see how 
IT ever can thank you enough,” he said, tak- 
ing both my hands in his. “I ought to have 
stuck to you, that’s what I ought to have 
done. You would have kept me straight. Do 
you know, I used to be awfully in love with 
you. You really were my first love. I was 
about eighteen then. You don’t look a day 
older, and you are just as sweet as ever.” 

I laughed outright. 

“What did I teH you?” I cried. “ You 
‘can’t help making love to save your life. 
Your gratitude is getting you into deeper 
water every minute. Go home, do. Run 


A GAME OF HEARTS IIg 


for your life, or you'll be engaged to me too. 
Then who'll help you out ?” 

He acted upon my suggestion and went 
hastily. 

Tabby, did you ever? He never was in 
love with me, never on this earth. What- 
ever possessed him to say such a thing? 
He loses his head, that’s what he does. I 
hope he won’t meet any woman younger 
than his grandmother before he gets home, 
or he might propose to her. 

* % * * * 

My heart stands still when I think of 

Louise King. 


IX 


o THE MADONNA OF THE QUIET MIND 


“Tt is not true that love makes all things easy, but 
it makes us choose what is difficult.” 

Across the street, in plain view from my 
window, has come to dwell a little brown 
wren of a woman with her five babies. The 
house, hitherto inconspicuous among its 
finer neighbors, at the advent of the Mayo 
family suddenly bloomed into a home. The © 
lawn blossomed with living flowers and the 
windows framed faces which shamed, in 
their dimpling loveliness, the painted cher-_ 
ubs on the wall. 

It was a delight to see Nellie Mayo in the 
midst of her children. Hers were all babies, 
such dear, amiable, kissable babies, each of 
whom seemed personally anxious to prove — 
to every one how much sweetness one small 
morsel of humanity could hold. But with 


THE MADONNA OF THE QUIET MIND 121 


five of them, bless me! the house was one 
glowing radiance of sunshine, in which the 
little mother lived and loved, until they ab- 
sorbed each other’s personality, and it was 
difficult to think of one without the others. 

Sometimes in a street-car or on the ele- 
vated train I have seen women who I felt 
convinced had little babies at home. It is 
because of the peculiar look they wear, the 
rapturous mother-look, which has its home in 
the eyes during the most helpless period of 
babyhood—an indescribable look, in which 
dreams and prophecy and heaven are min- 
gled. It is the sweetest look which can come 
to a woman’s face, saying plainly, ‘Oh, I 
have such a secret in my heart! Would that 
every one knew its rapture with me!” It 
wears off sooner or later, but with Nellie 
Mayo, whether because there always was a 
baby, or because each was welcomed with 
such a world of love, the look remained until 
it seemed a part of her face. 

Long ago we knew her as an unworldly 
girl, whose peachblow coloring gave to her 
face its chief beauty, although her plaintive 
blue eyes and smooth brown hair called forth 


I22 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


a certain protective faith in her simplicity and 
goodness. Sometimes girlhood is a myste- 
rious chaos of traits, out of which no one can 
foretell what sort ef cosmos will follow, or 
whether there will be a cosmos at all or 
only intelligent chaos to the end. But this 
girl seemed to carry her future in her face. 
She was a little mother to us all. It was 
a tribute to her gentleness and dignity 
that, although she was a poor girl among a 
bevy of rich ones, she was a favorite; un- 
acknowledged perhaps, but still a favorite. 
She always stood ready with her unosten- 
tatious help. She was everybody's under- 
study. Flossy Carleton, as she was then, 
fastened herself like a leech upon Nellie’s 
capacity for aid, and was a likely subject 
for the exercise of Nellie’s swifter brain 
and willing feet; for to see any one’s un- 
spoken need was to her like a thrilling cry 
for help, and was the only thing which 
could completely draw her from her shy 
reserve. ‘The chief reason she was popular 
was that she had a faculty of keeping her- 
self in the shadow. You never knew where 
she was until you wanted her, when she 


THE MADONNA OF THE QUIET MIND 123 


would seem to rise out of the earth to your 
side. But, in spite of your intense gratitude 
at the moment, you really found yourself 
taking her as a matter of course. She was 
one of those who are fully appreciated only 
when they are dead, and who then call forth 
the bitterest remorse that we have not made 
them know in life how dear they were and 
how painfully necessary to our happiness. 
It is rather a sad commentary upon those 
same girls, who accepted Nellie’s assistance 
most readily, to record that, when they were 
launched into society and were deep in the 
mysteries of full-fledged young-ladyhood, 
little Nellie Maddox was seldom invited to 
their most fashionable gatherings, but came 
in, at first, before their memory grew too 
rusty, for the simpler luncheons and teas. 
This is not a history of intentional or sys- 
tematic neglect, but a mere statement of 
the way things drifted along. Not one of 
the girls would wilfully have omitted her, if 
she had been in the habit of being asked ; 
but it was easy to let her name slip when all 
the rest did it, and so gradually it came to 
_ pass that we seldom saw her. Then she 


124. THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


married Frank Mayo, who would not be of- 
fended if he heard a newsboy refer to him 
as “a gent,’ or a maid-servant describe 
him as “a pretty man.” Of such a one it is 
scarcely necessary to add that he was self- 
ish, inordinately conceited, and, to complete 
the description, a trifle vulgar. He never 
suspected his wife’s cleverness nor appre- 
ciated her worship. It almost made me 
doubt her cleverness to see how she idol- 
ized him, but this instance went far towards 
proving that love, with some women, is en- 
tirely an affair of the heart. It irritates 
Rachel to hear any one say so. She says 
it argues ignorance of a nice distinction 
in terms, and that when the brain is not 
concerned it should be called by a baser 
name. ‘ 

I doubt if she could have brought her- 
self to say so if she had been looking into 
Nellie Mayo’s blue eyes, which looked tired 
and a little less blue than as I remembered 
them. They had pathetic purple shadows 
under them, which told of sleepless nights 
with the babies, and there were fine lines 
around her mouth; but her light-brown hair 


THE MADONNA OF THE QUIET MIND 125 


was as smooth and her dress as plain and 
neat as ever. 

It was like watching a nest of birds. I 
felt my own love expand to see the wealth 
of affection Nellie had for her precious fam- 
ily. Her unselfish zeal never flagged. She 
flitted from one want to another as naturally 
as she breathed and with as little conscious- 
ness of the process. Her household ma- 
chinery ran no more smoothly than many 
another’s, but Nellie met and surmounted 
all obstacles with an unruffled brow. Her 
outward calm was the result of some great 
inward peace. She simply had developed 
naturally from the girl we had known before 
we grew up and went away to be “ finished 
by travel.” 

Nothing could go so wrongly, no nerves 
throb so pitilessly, that they prevented 
her meeting her husband with the smile re- 
served for him alone. None of the babies 
could call it forth, When he came home 
tired, Nellie fluttered. around him making 
him comfortable, as if life held for her no 
sweeter task. . 

Being a woman myself, and having no 


126 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


husband to wait upon until it became natu- 
ral, I used to feel somewhat vexed that he 
never served her, instead of receiving the 
best of everything so complacently. He 
never seemed to realize that she might be 
tired or needed a change of routine. That 
household revolved around him. Of course 
it was partly Nellie’s fault that he had 
fallen into the habit of receiving everything 
and making no return. Fallen into it? No. 
With that kind of a man, an only son, and 
considered by the undiscriminating to be 
good-looking, his wife had only to take up 
his mother’s unfinished work of spoiling - 
him. It is true that these unselfish wom- 
en inculcate a system of selfishness in their 
families which often works their ruin. They 
rob the children of their rightful virtue of 
self-sacrifice. 

So Nellie idolized her husband. He was 
her king, and the king could do no wrong. 
She taught the babies a sweet system of 
idolatry, which so far had been harmless. 
He cared very little for children; so, when 
yearning to express their love for the hero 
of all their mother’s stories, with their little 


THE MADONNA OF THE QUIET MIND 127 


hearts almost bursting with affection, their 
love was most frequently tested by being 
obliged to keep away from their idol in 
order “not to bother him” with their kisses. 
Fortunately these same withheld kisses were 
dear to Nellie, and she never was too busy 
to accept and return them. Thus they never 
knew how busy she was. She was sure to 
be about some sweet task for others. If 
she ever rested, it was with the cosiest cor- 
ner occupied by somebody else. 

I wonder what will happen when, in 
heaven, one of these selfless mothers is led 
in triumph to a solid gold throne, all lined 
with eider-down cushions, where she can 
take the rest she never had on earth. Won’t 
she stagger back against the glittering walls 
of the New Jerusalem and say, “ Not for me. 
Not for me. Surely it must be for my hus- 
band”? But there, where places are ap- 
pointed, she will not be allowed to give it 
up—which may make her miserable even in 
heaven. Ah me, these mothers! It brings 
tears to my eyes to think of their unending 
love, which wraps around and shelters and 
broods over every one, whose helplessness 


128 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID _ 


clings to their help, whose need depends 
upon their exhaustless supply. Theirs it 
is to bear the invisible but princely crest, 
“Ich dien.” 

Nellie had no time for literary classes. 
Her music, of which we used to predict 
great things, had resolved itself into lullabies 
and kindergarten ditties for the children. 
She seldom found an opportunity to visit 
even me. So it was I who went there and 
saw how her life was literally bound by the 
four walls of that little brown house; yet I 
never felt any inclination to pity her, be- 
cause she was so contented. I knew of 
others who seemed happier—that is, the 
word seemed to describe them better—but 
none of them possessed Nellie Mayo’s 
placid content. 

Still, I did not like her husband. He was 
not of Nellie’s fine fibre. He was dull, while 
she was delightfully clever. His eyes were 
rather good, but he had a way of throwing 
expressive glances at me, as he talked upon 
trifling subjects, which disgusted me. I re- 
luctantly made up my mind that he consid- 
ered himself a “ Jady-killer,” but I felt out- 


THE MADONNA OF THE QUIET MIND 129 


raged that he should waste his ammunition 
upon me. I tried to be amused by it, when 
I found indignation was useless with him. I 
used to call him “ Simon Tappertit” to my- 
self, until I once forgot and referred to him 
as “Simon” before Nellie, when I gave up 
being amused and let it bore me naturally. I 
always had treated him with unusual consid- 
eration for Nellie’s sake, and even had tried 
genuinely to admire him because it gave her 
such pleasure; but when I discovered that 
the jackanapes took it as an evidence that 
he was progressing in my esteem, I did not 
know whether to laugh or cry with vexation. 

All at once, without any explanation or 
preface, Sallie began calling upon Mrs. 
Mayo and sending her flowers from her 
conservatories. Often when Sallie came to 
see me her coachman had orders to be at 
Mrs. Mayo’s disposal, to take the children 
for a drive, while Sallie and I sat and talked 
about everything except why she had em- 
barked upon this venture. I was sure there 
was something in it which must be kept out 
of sight, because Sallie never would talk 
about them. 

9 


130 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


I noticed that whenever Frank was away 
from home—which grew more and more fre- 
quent—an invitation was sure to come for the 
Mayos from Sallie. But Nellie never accept- 
ed without him, whether from pride or timid- 
ity I could not then determine, and all Sal- — 
lie’s efforts to persuade her were unavailing. 

It was such an unusual proceeding in 
Mrs. Payson Osborne to seek out any one 
that it excited my wonder. But she was 
not to be balked by anything; moreover, I 
had great faith in her motives, which were 
sound and good, even if her plans of carry- 
ing them out inclined to the frivolous. 

But all at once her frivolity seemed to 
reach a climax. She issued invitations for 
a lawn féte, to be followed by a very private, 
very select dinner, after which came the co- 
tillon. She had decorators from New York, 
and otherwise ordered the most extravagant 
setting for her entertainment. This might 
not seem unusual to every one, but with us, 
who are accustomed to extracting our en- 
joyment from one party at a time, this 
seemed rather a superb affair. Pet Winter- - 
botham was almost wild with delight. 


THE MADONNA OF THE QUIET MIND 131 


“Only think,” she cried, “she has asked 
Jack and me to lead the cotillon! Isn’t 
that sweet of her? Oh, I do think she is 
the dearest thing! Though I must say 
I’d rather have been asked to the dinner. 
That’s going to be perfectly elegant. I 
heard it was to be given for somebody, but 
I don’t know who it could be. It might be 
for Frankie Taliaferro. Mrs. Osborne has 
asked her to come up for it.” 

Pet’s remarks rushed on until I soon 
found myself carried along the tide of her 
enthusiasm, which she assured me was 
shared by every girl in town. 

I shall not attempt to describe Sallie’s 
success. ‘The weather, the people, fortune 
itself, was in her favor, and the whole after- 
noon was admirable. I confess, however, 
that it was with some slight curiosity that I 
awaited the dinner. 

Sallie’s cheeks were flushed and her eyes 
shone with an unusual brilliancy as she 
greeted us, but the proverbial feather would 
have felled any one of her guests when Pay- 
son offered his arm to Mrs. Frank Mayo, 
who rose out of a shadowy corner in a high- 


132 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


throated gown and led us to the dining- 
room. I caught Sallie’s eye as she laid her 
hand on Frank Mayo’s arm, and she gave 
me a comical look, half imploring, half de- 
fiant. : 
I was guilty of wondering if Sallie had 
been demented when she planned that din- 
ner-table, for this is the way we found our- 
selves: 

Next to Frank Mayo came Alice Asbury, 
encased in freezing dignity. Brian Beck, 
at his worst, supported her on the other 
hand. After Brian were Louise King and 
Charlie Hardy, both looking to my prac- 
tised eyes exceedingly stiff and uncomfort- 
able. I had no time to wonder if the blow 
had fallen, in casting a glance at the other 
guests. Nellie Mayo was admirably situ- 
‘ated between Charlie Hardy and Payson 
Osborne, both of whom were deference it- 
self to her. The difference in her simple 
attire from the full dress all around her in 
no wise disturbed her unworldly spirit. She 
looked with quiet admiration at the hand- 
some shoulders of Louise and Rachel, evi- 
dently never dreaming that the babies’ 


THE MADONNA OF THE QUIET MIND 133 


mother might be expected to follow their 
example in dress. 


° 
% 
ef 


oe 
1 
at 
I 
3 
n 


by 2 7 
a [e) 
aoe ¢ % 
§ 9 i 
9 4 
3 
Ce 


Grace Beck, sitting by Norris Whitehouse, 
would have an excellent opportunity of ce- 
menting or breaking off the prospective 
match, which as yet was unannounced, be- 
tween her sister and his nephew. Rachel 
would be polite, but not wildly entertaining, 
to Asbury; but he could count on me to be 


134 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


‘decent to him, while I snatched crumbs of 
intellectual comfort from Percival on my 
other hand. But Sallie had placed the fu- 
nereal Clinton Frost between that rattle- 
pated Frankie Taliaferro and her lively self, 
probably with the laudable intention of see- 
ing whether his face would be permanently 
disfigured by a smile. Nor was the poor 
wretch out of Brian Beck’s reach, but was 
made the objective point of Brian’s liveliest 
sallies, the hero of his most piquant and im- 
possible stories, which convulsed_us until I 
felt sure that the irritated Mr. Frost must 
cherish a secret but lively desire to punch his 
head. Possibly Brian was the only one who 
thoroughly enjoyed himself at that ill-starred 
dinner, for he is keen on the scent of a pre- 
carious situation which is liable to involve 
everybody in total collapse. In this in- 
stance he seemed to snuff the battle from 
afar and stirred up all the slumbering ele- 
ments of discord with unctuous satisfaction ; 
and if it had not been for the wicked twin- 
kle in his Irish blue eyes, which none of his 
victims could withstand, it might have re- 
sulted seriously. He gayly rallied Charlie 


THE MADONNA OF THE QUIET MIND 135 


Hardy on his flirtations; predicted seeing 
him yet brought up with a round turn in a 
breach-of-promise case; seemed highly edi- 
fied by Frankie Taliaferro’s efforts to appear 
unconcerned at these pleasantries ; railed 
openly at Clinton Frost’s being so unre- 
sponsive to the general mirth around him; 
shivered visibly at that gentleman’s icy re- 
torts; playfully called attention to his wife’s 
endeavors to frown him into silence; and, in 
spite of Sallie’s angry glances, really saved 
her dinner from proving a dismal failure. 
Indeed, the cases were too real, and too 
much genuine misery was concealed behind 
impassive faces, not to prove a dangerous 
situation, the tension of which was relieved 
_by Brian’s extravagant nonsense. Perci- 
val and Norris Whitehouse were sincerely 
amused by the wit in which Brian clothed 
his droll remarks. But the greatest mis- 
fortune of the dinner-giver was realized in 
Frank Mayo, the man who thinks he can 
tell a good story. The Mayos were so new 
to all of us that this peculiarity was not sus- 
pected until Brian discovered it and dragged 
it forth. He persuaded Frank to talk, lis- 


136 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


tened with absorbing interest to the flat- 
test tales, encouraged him if he flagged, and 
laughed until the tears came if he by chance 
forgot or slurred a point. 

However, no one seemed to think that 
there was anything seriously amiss except 
Sallie, who is a human barometer when she 
has guests. She knows by instinct when 
they are or are not being entertained. Nor 
was her tact at fault in seating the people, 
for I was the only one laden with almost 
unbearable knowledge, and I fell asleep that 
night thinking that possibly the situation 
was not so unusual as it appeared to me. I 
dare say plenty of dinners are given with 
just as many unsuspected trap-doors to sen- 
sationalism. 


Xx 


THE PATHOS OF FAITH 


**To him who is shod the whole world is covered 
with leather.” 

THE next afternoon I was resting and 
thinking over the brilliancy of the Payson 
Osborne entertainment, when Sallie came in, 
dressed from head to foot in black. There 
was not a suspicion of white at wrist or 
throat. I was too startled to ask a question 
until her burst of laughter relieved me. 

“You poor thing!” she cried, “did I 
frighten you? But I am in mourning; yes, 
truly, for my dinner-party. Ruth, Ruth, 
what was the matter with it?” 

“Why, nothing. It was exquisitely served, 
and oh, Sallie, your lawn féte and the co- 
tillon were beautiful. They were perfect. 
Truly, you do give the most successful en- 
tertainments in town.” 


138 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


“Certainly—why shouldn’t I,” said Sallie 
sharply, ‘‘ when I have never done anything, 
anything all my life but go to parties and. 
study how to give them? Oh, Ruth, dear, I 
do get so tired of it all. But,” taking on a 
brisker tone, “all the more reason why I 
should never give such a sad affair as that 
dinner. That dinner, Ruth, was what Brian 
Beck calls a howling failure. Payson never 
criticises anything that I do, but even he 
came to me quite gingerly this morning, 
after I had read what the papers had to say 
about it, and said, ‘ My dear child, what was 
the matter with your tea-party?’ Now, let 
us admit the success of the other two, and 
weep a little in a friendly way over the ‘ tea- 
party.’” 

“T had a lovely time—” I began, but 
Sallie interrupted me. 

“Hypocrite !” she cried vehemently. “ You 
know you didn’t. Your eyes were as big as 
turkey platters with apprehension.” 

“‘ My dear Sallie,” I expostulated. 

“Don’t you dare put on airs with me, 
then,” she said mutinously. ‘ Now, what 
ailed them all? It couldn’t have been the 


THE PATHOS OF FAITH 139 


advent of the Mayos. I’ve launched more 
ticklish craft than they. Nor could it have 
-been that abominable Brian Beck, who would 
spoil Paradise and be the utter ruin of a 
respectable funeral. Every one seemed to 
conspire to make my dinner a failure.” 

“Oh, Sallie, I think Percival especially 
exerted himself. He was in his most ex- 
quisite mood.” 

**Oh, Percival, of course. He must have 
suspected that something was going wrong. 
Did you ever notice, when he talks, how 
Rachel turns her head away? But you can 
see the color creep up into her face. She is 
too proud and shy to let people see how 
much she cares for him. But when she 
speaks Percival looks at her with all his 
eyes, and positively leans forward so that he 
shall not miss a word. I love to watch 
those two. Sometimes when I have been 
with them I feel as if I had been to 
church.” 

“Then, too, Payson’s manner to Nellie 
Mayo was the most chivalric thing I ever 
saw. He treated her as if the best in the 
land were not too good for her.” 


I40 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


“Nor is it,” said Sallie warmly. 

“ T’m glad you think so. Whata sweet, un- 
worldly spirit she has! Almost any woman 
would have been distressed because of her 
gown; but she was so superior to her dress, 
with that uplifted face of hers, that I felt 
ashamed to think of it myself. You gave her 
a rare pleasure last night, for she never meets 
clever men and women. The Percivals and 
Mr. Whitehouse delighted her, and you saw 
how well she sustained her part of the con- 
versation. You see she thinks, if she doesn’t 
have time to study. She was particularly 
fortunate in having Payson to take her out, 
for he has a faculty of putting people at their 
ease. Do you know, Sallie, Payson Osborne 
has come out wonderfully since you married 
him. He is more thoughtful, more consid- 
erate, and his manners always have been so 
good. I declare, last night I caught him 
looking at you in a way which made me 
quite fond of him.” 

“T’m fond of him myself,” said Sallie can- 
didly. “He undoubtedly is a dear old 
thing, and he is tremendously good to me. 
By the way, did you notice how red Frankie 


THE PATHOS OF FAITH I4I 


Taliaferro’s eyes were last night? She had 
the toothache, poor girl. It came on quite 
suddenly just before dinner, and it alarmed 
me for fear she couldn’t appear. Just be- 
fore dinner I was naming over the way the 
people were to go in, and I said that I had 
to put engaged people together and sepa- 
rate husbands and wives, after the manner 
of real life, and Payson asked if I was sure 
Louise King and Charlie Hardy were en- 
gaged, and I said yes, although it never had 
been announced, and just then Frankie burst 
into tears. It was a suspicious time for cry- 
ing, especially as that egregious flirt had 
paid her a great deal of attention; but 
Frankie would tell me, I am sure, and then 
she really had been to the dentist’s that 
morning. So I gave her something for it 
which she said cured it. I was so vexed at 
her for making her eyes red, for her blue 
dress brought it out. If she had been cry- 
ing over the other, she might have spared 
her tears, for I don’t believe Charlie and 
Louise are engaged. I think they have 
quarrelled, for when Charlie offered his 
arm to Louise, she looked up with that way 


142 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


she has of throwing her head back, and I 
declare to you, Ruth, I saw, I positively 
saw, forked lightnings shoot from her eyes. 
They blazed so I was afraid they would set 
his tie on fire. As for Charlie, he turned’ 
first green, then magenta, then a rich and 
lively purple. I give you my word they did 
not speak to each other during that din- 
ner, nor would Louise stay to the cotillon. 
Charlie danced it with Frankie. Nice state 
of affairs, isn’t it ?” 

I felt myself grow weak. But Sallie pro- 
ceeded gayly: “Then you know how hard 
I have tried to propitiate those miserable 
Asburys. I declare, I think Alice might 
meet me half way. Perhaps she didn’t like 
being seated between Frank Mayo and 
Brian Beck, but both she and that awful 
Frost man sat as stiff and unsmiling as if 
they had swallowed curtain-poles by the 
dozen.” Sallie does not mind an extra 
word or two to strengthen a simile. I tried 
to imagine Alice and Mr. Frost gulping 
down the articles Sallie mentioned, but mine 
was no match for Sallie’s nimble fancy and 
I gave it up. “Ido hope that Pet Winter- 


THE PATHOS OF FAITH 143 


botham will not marry that man. I should 
as soon see her led to-the altar by a satin- 
lined casket. I had to invite him when I 
found that Frankie could come. Wasn’t 
Brian Beck dreadful, and didn’t you think 
you would go to sleep under Frank Mayo’s 
stories? And didn’t Grace Beck’s airs with 
Mr. Whitehouse amuse you? Oh, she will 
hold that head of hers so high if Pet mar- 
ries Jack. How bored Asbury looked, didn’t 
he? So selfish of him not to pretend to be 
pleased. Even Rachel vexed me by not 
being nicer to Asbury. I declare, Ruth, I 
was so irritated at the queer way every one 
acted, I felt as if it would be a relief to 
make faces at them, instead of beaming on 
them the hospitable beam of a hostess. I 
wonder how they would have liked it.” 

“They might have considered it rather 
unconventional perhaps.” 

Sallie smiled absent -mindedly, pressed 
her hand to her flushed cheek, looked over 
towards the Mayo house, and then, meeting 
my inquiring glance, dropped her eyes in 
confusion. 

“Well,” I said tentatively. 


~ 
144 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


Sallie leaned back in her chair, put her 
hands behind her head, and closed her eyes. 

“JT wonder,” she said dreamily, “why I 
ever attempt to do things. Why can’t peo- 
ple let me alone, and why don’t I let them 
alone? Most of all, why do I ever try to 
keep a secret ?” 

I knew then that she had been rattling 
on because her mind was full of something 
else. I don’t believe she knew half that 
she had said. Presently to my surprise I 
saw a tear steal down her cheek. 

“O Sallie!” I exclaimed, now really wor- 
ried, ‘‘ what is it?” 

“T’ll tell you, Ruth, for you are the only © 
one who seems really to know and love that 
dear little Nellie Mayo and those blessed 
babies. Ruth, there is a Damocles sword 
hanging over that nest of birds, and it is 
liable to fall at any moment. Oh, it has 
weighed on my heart like lead ever since I 
discovered the secret. I know you don't 
like Frank Mayo, but you will despise him 
when I tell you the. mischief he is up to, 
and that poor little wife of his trusting him 
as if he were an archangel. Oh, he is 


THE PATHOS OF FAITH 145 


common, Ruth, and horrid, and if it is ever 
found out it will kill Nellie. But he is car- 
rying on dreadfully with a soubrette in New 
York. He is wasting his money on her— 
and you know he has none to spare—and 
seems to be infatuated with her; while she, 
of course, is only using him to advertise her- 
self. In fact, that is how I found it out. 
Payson is in a syndicate which is trying to 
buy one of those up-town theatres in New 
York and turn it into something else; I for- 
get just what they want to do with it, but any 
way, he came in contact with the manager 
of the theatre where this woman was play- 
ing. He gave them a dinner and afterwards 
they occupied his box, and while this wom- 
an was on the stage her manager told how 
some man was causing nightly sensations by 
the flowers he sent her, and he said that he— 
her manager—thought he would have it writ- 
ten up for the papers to advertise her before 
she started out on her tour. He said the 
man was making a fool of himself, but the 
actress didn’t care, and when he pointed 
out the fellow to them, Payson saw to his 
horror that it was Frank Mayo. He didn’t 
Io 


146 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


say a word before the other gentlemen, but 
the next day he went to the manager and 
begged him to advertise the woman in some 
other way. He told him who Frank was 
and all about his poor little wife and the 
children, and the manager, who seems to be 
a good-hearted man, said it was a shame and 
promised not to allow it. He even went so 
far as to offer to speak to the actress her- 
self and request her to refuse to be inter- 
viewed on the subject. So Payson came 
home quite relieved. But the next time 
he saw the manager Payson asked him how 
things were going, and he said worse than 
ever as far as Frank himself was concerned, 
and he added that when he mentioned the 
subject to the actress she tossed her head 
and said Mayo must take care of himself. 
“Then I thought I would do what I could 
to introduce him into society here, for you 
know he is ambitious in that line, and per- 
haps I might get him away from the creat- 
ure. So I gave that whole thing yesterday 
for the Mayo family, with what result you 
know, except that I haven’t told you that 
the presumptuous dolt made love mawkishly 


THE PATHOS OF FAITH 147 


to me all the evening. Yes, actually! Did 
you ever hear of such impertinence? Oh, 
the man is simply insufferable, Ruth. 

“Now, what I am constantly afraid of is 
that it will get into the papers after all. I 
read them, I fairly study them, so that it 
shall not escape me; but, if it does come 
out, what shall we do for Nellie? It will 
break her heart.” 

I looked at Sallie with gnawing conscience 
that I had ever called her lawn féte the 
climax of frivolity. The dear little soul! 
who would have suspected that she had 
such a worthy motive for her ball? But, do 
you know, sometimes in fashionable life we 
catch a glimpse of the simple-minded, home- 
ly kindliness which we are taught to believe 
exists only among horny-handed farmers, 
rough miners, and hardy mountaineers. 

** Sallie, dear child,” I said, “I beg your 
pardon for not knowing how noble you are.” 

“Noble? I? Sallie Cox? Now, nobody 
except Payson ever hinted at such a thing, 
and I hushed him up instantly. No, Ruth, 
it was nothing. I dare say Rachel or you 
would have thought of some grand project 


148 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


which would have been effectual, but 7 
couldn’t think of anything to do but to 
tickle his vanity by making him the guest 
of honor at the best affair of the season.” 

“ Indeed, I think neither Rachel nor I 
could have thought of anything so sure to 
captivate a shallow mortal like Frank Mayo.” 

““ Set a thief to catch a thief,” said Sallie 
merrily. “I’m shallow myself. 7 knew how 
it would feel to have such a fine thing given 
forme. My dear, if the ball were only fine 
enough it would cure a broken heart.” 

“Not if the heart were really broken, 
Sallie.” 

“ Well, you must admit that it would help 
some,” she said whimsically. 

And so she went away and left the burden 
upon me. Then I, too, fell to devouring 
the papers, as I knew Sallie was doing with 
me. I went more than ever to the little 
brown house which lay in such peril, and I 
never saw Nellie with a paper in her hand 
that I did not shudder. 

At last the thing we so dreaded came 
to pass. In the evening paper there was 
quite a sensational account of it. Thank 


THE PATHOS OF FAITH 149 


Heaven, no name was given; but alas, the 
description of him, of his wife and five little 
children, was unmistakable. I felt as though 
I had sat still and watched a cat kill a bird. 
It was raining, not hard, but drearily, and 
the dead leaves fluttered against the win- 
dows as the chill wind blew them from 
where they clung. I was lonesome, and the 
autumn evening intensified my feelings. I 
glanced over to where a red glow came from 
Nellie’s windows. I fancied her sitting there 
with the paper in her hand, as she always 
did in the one spare moment of her busy 
day, with her heart crushed by the news. 
She would be alone, too, for Frank was out 
of town. Poorchild! Poor child! I started 
up and decided to go and see her. If she 
didn’t want me I could come back, but what 
if she did want me and I was not there? 

I found her sitting, as I had expected, 
alone. The paper, with the fatal page up- 
permost, lay in her lap, as if she had read 
it and laid it down. There was only the 
firelight in the room. 

“ Come in, dear,” she said gladly. “I 
was just thinking of you and wondering if 


150 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


such weather did not make you blue. Sit 
down here by the fire. It was sweet of you 
to come in the rain.” 

She searched my distressed face anxiously 
as she spoke. I made no reply. My heart 
was too full at being comforted when I had 


come to comfort. As I sat on a low stool | 


at her side she seemed to divine my mood, 
for she drew my head against her knee with 
a mother touch, and threaded my hair with 
a mother hand, and pressed down my eye- 
lids as I have seen her do when she puts 
her baby to sleep. And though she must 
have felt the tears come, she did not appear 
to know. : 

“Dear Ruth,” she said, “I have been 
sitting here thinking about you, and won- 
dering if you were satisfied, such a loving 
heart as you have, to face the rest of your 
life without the love you deserve. You 
won’t be vexed with me for speaking of it 
to you, for you know I am so old-fashioned 
that I think love is the only thing in this 
world worth having. It is all that I live 
for. Of course my children love me, but, 
until they grow older, theirs is only an in- 


THE PATHOS OF FAITH I51 


stinctive love. It isn’t like the love of a 
husband, which singles you out of all the 
other countless women in the world to be 
his and only his forever. ‘There is power 
enough in that thought to nerve the weakest 
woman to do a giant’s task. The mere fact 
that you are all in all, the ov/y woman, to the 
man you so dearly love, the one person who 
can make his world; when you think that 
your being away from one meal or out of 
the house when he comes in will make him 
miss you till his heart aches—this will keep 
down a moan of pain when it is almost be- 
yond bearing, for fear it might cause him to 
suffer with you; it will nerve you to stand up 
and smile into his eyes when you are ready 
to drop with exhaustion. Love, such as a 
husband’s love for his wife, is the most pre- 
cious, the most supporting thing a woman 
can have. You never hear me talk much 
about my husband, but he is all this and 
more to me. I cannot begin to tell you 
about it. I read about unhappy marriages 
—why, I read a dreadful thing to-night in the 
paper, which set me to thinking how safe 
and happy I am, and how thankful I ought 


152 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


to be that I can trust my husband so. It 
was about a man who was unfaithful to his 
wife, and they had five children just as we 
have. I know such things do occur, but 
how or why is a mystery to me. I hope I 
am not too hard when I say that in such a 
case it must be the wife’s fault. Surely if 
she had been a good wife, an unselfish and 
loving wife, he could not have been enticed 
away. Poor thing! I wonder how she felt 
when she heard it. Probably she wouldn’t 
believe it. Probably she had too much 
faith in him. You shake your head. Why, 
Ruth, you dear thing, you don’t know any- 
thing about it. A wife couddn’t believe such 
a thing. Why, I wouldn’t believe it if told 
by an angel from heaven. But then my hus- 
band is so dear tome. I do sometimes won- 
der if all women care as much for their hus- 
bands as I dofor mine. Do you know, dear, 
I think about youso much. I knowthat there 
have been several hearts in which you have 
reigned, and yet you have not cared. But 
the true love, the right lover, has not come, 
or you could not have passed him by. He 
is waiting for you; somewhere, somehow, 


THE PATHOS OF FAITH 153 


he will come to you, I am sure, and you 
will know then that you have belonged to 
each other all this time; that this love has 
been coming down the ages from eternity 
for just you two. You will not refuse it 
then. Why, I could never have refused to 
marry Frank when I found that I was as 
much to him as he was to me! He is so 
handsome, so good. I shall never cease to 
thank God that He made him turn aside into 
the quiet places to find me. But, in spite of 
all this, you know I don’t think he is per- 
fect. He doesn’t care for books as much 
as I wish he did. He has no ear for music, 
and he cannot tell a story straight to save 
his life, the dear boy! Love does not blind 
my eyes, but this is what it does do. It 
makes me overlook in him what would an- 
noy me in others. When, at that beautiful 
dinner of Mrs. Osborne’s, Frank told those 
stories of his that I’ve heard for years, I 
don’t think any one cared to hear them ex- 
cept Mr. Beck and me. I knew they were 
not well told, but it was my husband who 
was telling them, and I could listen to his 
voice, even if I couldn’t sit next him. 


154 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


“ How the wind blows. Don’t you think 
it has a lonesome sound to-night? There 
isn’t a glimmer of light from any of your 
windows yet, and see what a lovely glow 
this fire casts all through the room. It 
makes the cold walls look warm, and if it 
makes shadows, it chases them away when 
it blazes its brightest. It is your fault 
that there is no light in your windows, and 
your fault that you have closed your heart 
against love. You could have the glow that 
lights my house and my heart if you only 
would. You know, dear, I am not talking 
to you as a neighbor now or even as a 
friend, but as a woman talks to a woman 
out of her inmost heart. It is only be- 
cause I love you so and because I have 
seen you with my babies that I know what 
a home-maker you are. You seem so sad 
sometimes, and I know your heart is wist- 
ful if your eyes are not. Howcan you have 
the courage to shut out love? How can 
you see the happiness of all your friends 
and not want a share of it yourself? Why 
do you cry so,my dear? Is there some one 
you love? Has any trouble come between 


THE PATHOS OF FAITH 155 


you? No? No? Well, there, there! It 
was selfish of me to show you the way I 
look at things and to try to make you dis- 
satisfied. Never mind. You are stronger 
than I. I could not live without love; I 
should die. But if you can, it may be that 
you are fulfilling your destiny more nobly 
than many another who has more of what I 
should choose. 

“Oh, must you go? Forgive me if I have 
said what I should not. Good-night, and 
God bless you, my dear.” 


XI 
THE HAZARD OF A HUMAN DIE 


‘* The tallest trees are most in the power of the 
wind.” 

Last night at the theatre there were the- 
atricals all over the house. My eyes fol- 
lowed the play on the stage, but my mind 
was filled with the farce in the next box 
and with the tragedy in the one opposite. 

I was with the Ford-Burkes, and, hearing 
familiar voices, I pulled aside the curtain, 
and in the next box were the Payson Os- 
bornes, Pet Winterbotham, and Jack White- 
house. Pet thrust her hand over the rail- 
ing and whispered, 

“T’m engaged. Put your hand here and 
feel the size of my ring. You can get an 
idea of it through my glove. I’d take it off 
and show it to you, only I think it would 
look rather pronounced, don’t you ?” 


THE HAZARD OF A HUMAN DIE 157 


“ Rather,” I assented faintly. 

I glanced beyond her into the fresh blue 
eyes of young Jack Whitehouse, and I won- 
dered if the alert, manly young fellow, with 
his untried but inherited capabilities, knew 
that he had been accepted as a husband 
because his hair curled and he looked 
“eneppie.” * 

“T suppose you have heard the news, 
haven’t you?” she went on. 

“ Nothing in particular. What news?” 

“Look across the house and you will see.” 

Just entering their box opposite were 
Louise King and Norris Whitehouse, Jack’s 
uncle. 

“What do you mean?’ I asked, with a 
wrench at Pet’s little hand which made her 
wince. 

“Tt’s an engagement. Uncle and nephew 
engaged the same season. Isn’t it rich? © 
Think of Louise King being my aunt. She 
is only twenty-three.” 

Then they saw us and bowed. I felt 
faint as my mind adjusted itself to this new 
arrangement. I levelled my glass at them. | 

Louise, magnificently tall and handsome, 


158 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


looked quite self-contained. She is one of 
the best-bred girls I know, but it required a 
stronger imagination than mine to fathom 
what mysterious change had transformed 
her from the impulsive, loving creature of 
Charlie Hardy’s story to this serene-eyed 
woman, who had deliberately elected to 
marry at the funeral of her own heart. 

As I looked across at her during that 
long evening, I felt that it was impertinent 
to probe her heart with my wonderings and 
surmises. I knew instinctively just how 
carefully she was hiding her hurt from all 
human eyes. I knew how her fierce pride 
was bearing up under the cruelty of it. I 
felt how she had rushed from the humilia- 
tion one man had brought her to the wait- 
ing love of the one who should have been 
her first choice by the divine right of nat- 
ural selection. This strong man had loved 
her for years, but he would never allow her 
to imperil either his dignity or her own. He 
was just the man her impulsive, high-strung 
nature could accept as a refuge, beat against 
and buffet if need be, then learn to appreci- 
ate and cling to. 


ee eae ee a 


THE HAZARD OF A HUMAN DIE 159 


I had an impression that he was not to- 
tally ignorant of the state of affairs. He 
was older and wiser than she, and capable 
of the bravery of this venture. No, he was 
not being deceived. I was sure of it. Lou- 
ise was too high-minded to attempt it. She 
would be scornfully honest with him. Her 
scorn would be for herself, not for him, and 
he had accepted her joyfully on these terms. 
His daring was tempered with prudence, 
and his clear vision doubtless forecast the 
end. His insight must have shown him that, 
with a girl like Louise, the rebound from the 
self-disdain to which Charlie Hardy’s confes- 
sion must have reduced her would be as in- 
tense as her humiliation had been, and that 
her passionate gratitude to the man who 
restored her self-respect would be bound- 
less. Not every man—not even every man 
who loved her—could do this. He must 
possess strong nerves who descends into a 
volcano. He must have a more unbending 
will who tames any wild thing; but what an 
intoxicating thrill of pride must come to him 
who, having confidence in his own powers, 
makes the attempt and succeeds. 


160 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


Perhaps if Louise had been strong enough 
to fight this cruel battle out with herself as 
Rachel would have done, and win as Ra- 
chel would have won, she might have been 
able to choose differently. She might then, 
strong in her own strength, marry a man of 
lesser personality, a younger man, and they 
two could have adjusted their lives to each 
other gradually. Now it must be Louise 
who would be adjusted, and Norris White- 
house was just the man to know the cu- 
rious fact that the more fiery and impetuous 
a woman is, the more easily, if she is in 
love, will she mould herself to circum- 
stances. The more untamed and unbend- 
ing she seems, the more helpless will she be 
under the strong excitement of love or grief. 

A strong-minded woman is easier to per- 
suade than a weak one. The grander the 
nature the greater its pliability towards 
truth. The longer I sat and gazed into the 
opposite box the clearer it grew in my mind 
that the suddenness of this venture did not 
imply rashness, but serene-eyed faith only, 
and such faith would captivate Louise King 
more than would love. The only impossible 


THE HAZARD OF A HUMAN DIE 161 


thing about it to a sceptical Old Maid was 
that it was the man who was proving him- 
self such a hero, and who was upsetting my 
favorite theory that men never understand 
emotional women. Still, it was not difficult 
to except as unusual a man like Norris 
Whitehouse, and yet have my theory hold 
good. In imagination I leaped forward to 
the peaceful outcome of this turbulent be- 
ginning, and overlooked the way which led 
to it. I found myself hoping, with pain- 
ful intensity, that this venture in which 
Norris Whitehouse and I had embarked 
would prove successful. I had known and 
loved Louise King all her life. I had loved 
her dear mother before her, and the beauti- 
ful daughterhood of this girl had always 
touched me as the highest and sweetest 
type I ever had known. I did not want to 
be the one to bring her face to face with 
her first great sorrow, although I dared not 
interfere to less purpose. For 


‘Tis an awkward thing to play with souls, 
And matter enough to save one’s own. 
Yet think of my friend and the burning coals 
We played with for bits of stone.” 
II 


162 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


They could not know that I had had any- 
thing to do with it; yet, if ill came of it, I 
should blame myself all the rest of my life. 

Not long afterwards they were married 
very quietly and went away for a few weeks. 
When they returned I sought Louise with 
eagerness, and found that my fears were 
not groundless. I tried to think what to 
do. If it would have eased matters, I would 
willingly have gone to her and confessed 
that I instigated Charlie Hardy’s confession. 
But I felt that the root of the matter lay 
deeper than that, so I said nothing that 
could be construed into an unwelcome 
knowledge of her affairs. 

In the short time which elapsed between 
their return and the date set for their de- 
parture for Europe, where they were to stay 
a year, I saw Louise continually. She 
sought me as if she liked to be with me, 
although her eyes never lost the anxious, 
hunted expression which you sometimes 
see in the eyes of some trapped wild creat- 
ure. 

It was a raw morning, with a chill wind 
blowing, when their steamer was to sail. 


THE HAZARD OF A HUMAN DIE 163 


Mr. Whitehouse, thinking I might have 
some last private word to say to Louise, skil- 
fully detached everybody else and strolled 
with them beyond earshot, but where his 
eyes could continually rest upon his wife’s 
face. 

As Louise and I walked up and down I 
took in mine the small hand which emerged 
from the great fur cuff of her boat cloak, 
and gradually its rigidity relaxed under my 
friendly pressure. I remembered, as I oc- 
casionally tightened my grasp upon it, that 
my dear little baby sister Lois, who was 
taken away from us before she outgrew 
her babyhood, used to squeeze my hand in 
this fashion, and when I asked her what it 
meant, she invariably said, “ It means dat it 
loves you.” I wondered if the same inar- 
ticulate language could be conveyed to poor, 
suffering Louise. Suddenly she turned to 
me and said, 

“You have thrown something gentle, a 
softness around me this morning. I can 
feel it. What is it, Ruth?” 

“T don’t know, dear, unless it is my love 
for you.” 


t 


164 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


“Tt is something more. Your eyes look 
into mine as if you knew all about it and 
wished to comfort me.” 

As I made no answer, she turned and 
looked down at me from her superb height. 

“Tell me,” she said quite gently; “I 
shall not be angry. Tell me, do you know?” 

“Ves, Louise, I know.” 

She hesitated a moment as if she really 
had not believed it. Then she said slowly, 

“Tf any other person on earth except you 
had told me that, I should die. I could not 
live in the knowledge. But you—well, your 
pity is not an insult somehow.” 

“Because it is not pity, Louise,” I said 
steadily. ‘There is a difference between 
pity and sympathy. One is thrown at you 
=the other walks with you.” 

She only pressed my hand gratefully. 
Suddenly she turned and said impulsively, 

“Then you must know how utterly wretch- 
ed I am.” 

Glancing over her shoulder I could see 
the eyes of her husband fastened upon her 
with an expression which stirred me to put 
forth my best efforts. 


THE HAZARD OF A HUMAN DIE 165 


Then it came over me how pent-up all 
this intensity of feeling must be. I real- 
ized how impossible it would seem to her 
to speak of it. Taking my life in my hand— 
for I was mortally afraid—I rushed in, after 
the manner of my kind, where angels fear 
to tread. 

“ Did you love him then so much?” 

The pupils of her eyes enlarged until they 
were all black with excitement. She caught 
both my hands in hers. 

“Only God Himself knows how I loved 
him,” she whispered. 

I knew then that all Charlie had said was 
true, and, weak coward that I was, if I could 
have undone the past, I would have given 
him back to her. I was borne away by a 
glimpse of such love. O Charlie Hardy! 
And you cast this from you for a pair of 
blue eyes ! 

“How came you to love such a weak 
man ?” I asked tremblingly. 

“That is what I want to know. How 
could I? How can girls of my sort love so 
hopelessly beneath us? I’ve thought and 
wondered over that question until my brain 


166 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


has almost turned, and the only consolation 
I find is that I am not the only one. Other 
women, cleverer than I, have loved the most 
contemptible of men and have been deceived 
just as I was. Oh, if he or I had only died 
before I discovered the truth! If I could 
have mourned him honorably and felt that 
my grief was dignified! But I won’t allow 
myself to grieve over him. I tell myself 
that I am well out of it and that I ought 
to be glad. But instead of gladness there 
is a dull, miserable ache in my heart, which 
I feel even in my sleep. Not for him; I 
don’t mourn for him, but for myself—for my 
fallen idols and my shattered ideals. What 
will such men have to answer for? I doubt 
if I ever can believe in anything human 
again.” 

“ Anything Auman,” I repeated gladly. 

Louise looked down. 

“He was not omnipotent,” she said 
huskily. “He ruled my heart only, not 
my soul.” 

“IT suppose you have tried to love your 
husband ?” I said. 

“Tried? Oh, Ruth, I have tried so 


THE HAZARD OF A HUMAN DIE 167 


hard! He is so good to me. He knows 
everything. Of course I told him. That 
was why we were married so suddenly. He 
wished it and urged such excellent reasons, 
and I had so much respect for him and 
his wisdom in what is best, that I married 
him. I thought I could love him. I always 
thought that if I didn’t love—the other 
one—I should love Norris; but I can’t. I 
believe my power of love is gone forever. 
I feel sometimes as if the best part of me 
had been killed—not died of its own ac- 
cord, but as if it had been murdered.” 

“Poor child!’ I said. ‘“ Why don’t you 
talk this over with your husband ?” 

“ Oh, Ruth, how could I?” 

“ Well, may I talk to you? Will it hurt 
you?” 

“ Nothing that you would say can hurt 
me, dear.” 

“Then let me say just this. You have 
been trying to do in weeks what nature 
would take years to do. In real life you 
cannot lose your love and heal your worse 
than widowed heart and love anew as you 
would in private theatricals. You have out- 


168 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


raged your own delicate sensibilities, but 
not with your husband’s consent. He does 
not want you to try to love him. No good 
man does. He wants you to love him be- 
cause you can’t help yourself— because it 
seems to your heart to be the only natural 
thing to do. ‘When the song’s gone out of 
your life, you can’t start another while it’s 
a-ringing in your ears. It’s best to have 
a bit o’ silence, and out of that maybe a 
psalm ’ll come by and by.’” 

“Oh, Ruth, dear Ruth, say that again,” 
she cried, turning towards me with tears in 
her lovely eyes. I repeated it. 

“How restful to dare to take ‘a bit o’ 
silence’ !”” 

“No one can prevent you doing so but 
yourself. Mr. Whitehouse married you to 
give you just that, confident that he loved 
you so much that the psalm would come by 
and by.” 

“T believe he did,” said Louise gently, 
with color rising in her cheeks. 

“ Another thing. Don’t try not to grieve. 
Don’t repress yourself. . It is right that you 
should mourn over your lost ideals. Noth- 


THE HAZARD OF A HUMAN DIE 169 


ing on earth brings more poignant grief than 
that. You will never get them back. Do 
not expect what is impossible. They were 
false ideals, none the less beautiful and dear 
to you for being that, but truly they were dis- 
torted. You will see this some time. You 
have begun to see it now. You realize that 
this man was in no way what you thought 
him. You had idealized him, had almost 
crowned him. Now you can’t help trying 
to invest Mr. Whitehouse with the same un- 
namable, invisible qualities. But no man 
has them. Your husband is a thousand 
times more worthy than the other, yet even 
he does not deserve worship. Let the man 
do the crowning if you can, although a wom- 
an of your temperament would find even 
that difficult—that which the most inane 
of women could accept with calmness and 
a smile. You have the magnificent humil- 
ity of the truly great. Still it is not ap- 
preciated in this world. Try resting for 
a while and let your husband love you.” 

I knew that I was saying, though per- 
haps in a different way, things which Nor- 
ris Whitehouse had urged upon her. Not 


170 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


that she said so. She would have regarded 
that as sacrilege. But it was a look, a little 
trembling smile, which betrayed the ingenu- 
ous young creature to me. I felt that I was 
in the presence of a nature very fair and ex- 
quisitely pure. It was a sacred feeling. I 
almost felt as if I ought not to read the 
signs in her face, because she had no idea 
that they were there. 

““T have such horrible doubts,” she said 
suddenly with suppressed bitterness. “I 
do not belittle my love. I know that I 
loved him with all my heart and soul, and 
that I gave him more than most women — 
would have done, because love means in- 
finitely more to me than it does to them. 
I knew all the time that I loved him more 
than he loved me, but I did not care, for I 
believed, blind as I was, that we loved each 
other all we were capable of doing, and if I 
had more love to give it was only because 
I was richer than he, and I meant to make 
him the greater by my treasure. Now I feel 
that both I and my love have been wasted. 
Oh, it was a cruel thing, Ruth. I feel so 
poor, so poor.” 


THE HAZARD OF A HUMAN DIE I7I 


“ Louise, you think, but you do not think 
rightly. Ave you poorer for having loved 
him? What is his unworth compared with 
your worth? Isn’t your love sweeter and 
truer for having grown and expanded? No 
love was ever wasted. It enriches the giver 
involuntarily. You are a sweeter, better 
woman than before you loved, unless you 
made the mistake of small natures and let 
it embitter you. You have no right to feel 
that it has been wasted.” 

“ Do you think so?” she said doubtfully. 
“That is an uplifting thought.” Then she 
added in a low voice, “There is one thing 
more. It is very unworthy, I am afraid, but 
it is a canker that is eating my heart out. 
And that is the mortification of it. Can 
you picture the thing to yourself? Can you 
form any idea of how I felt? It grows worse 
the more I think of it.” 

“T know, I know. But, dear child, there 
is where I am powerless to help you. If I 
were in your place I think I should feel 
just as you do. It was a cruel thing. I 
wonder that you bore it as well as you 
did.” 


172 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


“What! Should you feel that way? Then 
you do not blame me?” 

“Why mention blame in connection with 
yourself? You are singularly free from it. 
But did you ever consider what an honor 
the love of such a man as your husband 
is? Do you know how he is admired by 
great men? Do you realize how he must 
love you, and what magnificent faith he 
must have to wish to marry a young girl 
like you who admits that she does not love 
him? If you never do anything else in this 
world except to deserve the faith he has in 
you, you will live a worthy life.” 

We were standing still now, and Louise 
was looking at her husband at a distance 
with a look in her eyes which was good to 
see. 

“You never can love him as you loved 
the other one. A first love never comes 
again. Would you want it to? When you 
love your husband, as he and I both know 
that you will do some time—perhaps not 
soon, but he is very patient —still, I say, 
when you love him you will love him in a 
gentler, truer way.” 


THE HAZARD OF A HUMAN DIE 173 


“Can you tell me why such a bitter ex- 
perience should have been sent to me so 
early in life ?” 

“To save you pain later and to make of 
you what you were planned to be.” 

Tears rolled down her cheeks and she 
bent to kiss me, for the last mail had been 
put aboard and we had only a moment 
more. 

What she whispered in my ear I shall 
never tell to any one, but it will sweeten 
my whole life. 

As we went towards Mr. Whitehouse 
Louise involuntarily quickened her pace a 
little and held out her hand to him with a 
smile. It was good to see his face change 
color and to view the quiet delight with 
which he received her. 

Then there were good-byes and hurried 
steps and a great deal of shouting and 
hauling of ropes, and there were waving of 
hands and a tossing of roses from the decks 
above and a few furtive tears and many 
heart-aches, and then —the great steamer 
had sailed. 


XII 
IN WHICH I WILLINGLY TURN MY FACE WESTWARD 


‘*Grow old along with me. 
The best is yet to be, 
The last of life, for which the first was made. 
Our times are in His hand 
Who saith, ‘A whole I planned, 
Youth shows but half; trust God, see all, nor be 
afraid.” — 

THE years cannot go on without destroy- 
ing the old landmarks, and I am so old- 
fashioned that change of any kind saddens 
me. People move away, strangers take their 
houses, the girls marry, children grow up, 
and everything is so mutable that some- 
times my cheerfulness has a haze to it. 

I am in a mood of retrospection to-night. 
I am living over the past and knitting up 
the ravelled ends. 

Dear Rachel! I am thankful that she 
and Percival continue so happy. It is won- 


I TURN MY FACE WESTWARD 175 


derful how every one recognizes and speaks 
of the completeness of these two. They 
do not parade their affection. They seem 
rather to try to hide it even from me, as if 
it were almost too sacred for even my kindly 
eyes. It is in the atmosphere, and, though 
they go their separate ways, they are more 
thoroughly together than any other married 
people I know. 

Both Percival and Rachel are becoming 
very generally recognized now. People are 
discovering how wonderfully clever their 
work is, and they share themselves with the 
public, although it is a sacrifice every time 
they do so. Rachel’s rather turbulent clev- 
erness has softened down. She says it is 
because it is “billowed in another greater 
and gentler sort.”” She looks at me rather 
wistfully sometimes. I know what she 
thinks, but she does not bore me with ques- 
tions. I wonder if she thinks I regret any- 
thing. Unless I consider that the Percivals 
have redeemed the record I am keeping, 
there is nothing especially tempting in the 
marriages I am watching. I cannot think 
that they are any happier than I am. 


176 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID — 


Sallie Cox seems contented most of the 
time. She has a magnificent establishment, 
handsomer than all the rest of the girls’ put 
together. Her husband “ doesn’t bother” 
her, she says, and the Osbornes are very 
popular. 

“T’m glad I’m shallow,” she said to me 
once. “Shallow hearts do not ache long. 
If I had a deep nature I should go mad or > 
turn intoasaint. As it is, I wear the scars.” 

Once, when I went with her to Rachel’s, 
she sat and looked around the simple, inex- 
pensive house, with the walls all lined with 
books and no room too good to live in ev- © 
ery day, and she said, 

“This is the prettiest home I ever was 
in in my life, and there is not a lace curtain 
in the house !” 

We laughed—everybody laughs at Sallie 
—and Rachel said gently, 

“We don’t need them.” 

Sallie looked up quickly and took in the 
full significance of the words, as she an- 
swered in the same tone, 

“No, you do not, but I do.” And each 
woman had told her heart history. Now, 


I TURN MY FACE WESTWARD 177 


Rachel must know almost as much about 
Sallie as I do; but she never will know all. 

Sallie said she went home and hated ev- 
ery room in her house separately and spe- 
cifically ; then she had a good cry over “the 
perfectness of the Percivals,’”’ and issued in- 
vitations to a masked ball. 

“ That ball was full of significance, Ruth,” 
she told me afterwards with her most whim- 
sically knowing look. “It was bristling 
with it. But nobody thought of it except a 
certain little goose I know named Sara Cox 
Osborne.” 

Jack Whitehouse and Pet Winterbotham 
_ are married. They had the most beautiful 
wedding I ever saw; but it was like watch- 
ing the babes in the wood, for they are such 
a young-looking pair. 

I understand better now what Pet meant 
when she talked about Jack’s appearance so 
much. I think he expressed to her the idea 
of perpetual youth and eternal spring-time. 
To me, too, it seems as if he ought always 
to be yachting in blue and white, or lying 
at full length on the grass at some girl’s 
feet. And Pet herself makes an admirable 

12 


178 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


companion- piece. When I see her in a 
misty white ball-dress, with one man bring- 
ing her an ice and another holding her flow- 
ers and a third bearing her filmy wraps, I 
feel that things are quite as they should be. 
Some people seem to be born for fair weath- 
er and smooth sailing. 

It is too soon to judge them finally: Nor- 
ris Whitehouse’s nephew will outgrow the 
ball-room, and Pet will find in Louise an 
incentive to grow womanly. 

The Asburys have built a fine house since 
Alice’s father died, and go about a great 
deal, but seldom together. Asbury lives at 
the club, and Alice has her mother with her. 
Alice has embraced Theosophy and spells 
her name “ Alys.” She always is interest- 
ed in something new and advanced, and 
whenever I meet her I am prepared to go 
into ecstasies over a plan to save men’s 
souls by electricity, or something equally 
speedy in the moral line. She is daft on 
spiritual rapid transit. 

She does these things because she is 
a disappointed, clever, ambitious woman, 
who would have made a noble character 


‘I TURN MY FACE WESTWARD 179 


if she had been surrounded by right influ- 
ences. 

What would have been the result if Alice 
had taken as her creed: ‘The situation that 
has not its duty, its ideals, was never yet 
occupied by man. Yes, here in this poor, 
miserable, hampered, despicable Actual, 
wherein thou even now standest, here or 
nowhere is thy Ideal; work it out there- 
from, and working, live, be free. Fool! 
the Ideal is in thyself; thy condition is but 
_the stuff thou art to shape that same ideal 
out of; what matters whether such stuff be 
of this sort or that, so the form thou give it 
be heroic, be poetic? Oh, thou that pin- 
est in the imprisonment of the Actual and 
criest bitterly to the gods for a kingdom 
wherein to rule and create, know this of a 
truth: the thing thou seekest is already 
with thee, ‘here or nowhere,’ couldst thou 
only see’’? 

Ah, well, she could not. She still is 
crying to the gods and spelling her name 
“ Alys.” Her cleverness must have an out- 
let, and, with worse than no husband to lav- 
ish it upon, she scatters it to the four winds 


180 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


of heaven and gets herself talked about as 
“queer.” 

May Brandt has bitten into her apples of 
Sodom, and the taste of ashes is bitter in- 
deed to her. She knows now that Brandt 
never loved her, and did love Alice. I do 
not know whether she thinks he still cares 
for Alice or not. May never had much beau- 
ty to lose, but she looks worn and unhappy, 
and watches Alice with a degree of feeling 
which would appear vulgar to me if I did 
not know just how miserable she is. She is 
hopelessly plain now, and Alice is still like a 
tall, stately lily. Brandt devours her with his 
eyes, but Alice makes him keep his distance. 

Sallie Cox has been diplomatic and harm- 
less enough to make Alice forgive her, and. 
they are quite good friends; but Alice is 
magnificent in her scorn of Brandt's wife, 
who almost cowers in her presence. 

Poor May! I wish I could take that look 
of suffering from her little pinched, three- 
cornered face for just one hour. But how 
could 1? How could anybody who knew 
all about it? 

She does not understand Alice in all her 


I TURN MY FACE WESTWARD 181 


- moods and vagaries, and Alice does not 
condescend to explain herself even to her 
friends. I do not believe that Alice and 
Brandt have ever spoken on the subject 
which occupies three minds whenever they 
two are thrown together. Yet I imagine it 
would be a relief to May if she were told that. 
However, she is scarcely noble enough to be- 
lieve it, even if Alice herself should tell her. 
But Alice never will. She never gives it a 
thought. Brandt, too, has honor, though, 
even if he had not, Alice would have it for 
him and forbid a word. 

It is a fortunate thing for some people’s 
chances for a future life that there are a rea- 
sonable number of consciences distributed 
through the world, although it would be an 
Old Maid’s suggestion that sometimes they 
be allowed to drive instead of being used 
as a liveried tiger—for ornament and al- 
ways behind. It is a great pity that peo- 
ple who are supplied with them—and well- 
cultivated consciences too—have not the 
courage to live up to them, but allow them- 
selves to be gently and feebly miserable all 
their lives. 


182 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


Now, Charlie Hardy has periods of being 
the most miserable man I ever knew. His 
last interview with Louise must have been 
as serious a thing as he ever experienced. 
He has married Frankie Taliaferro, and she 
makes the sweetest little kitten of a wife 
you ever saw. In Louise he would have 
been protected by a coat of mail. In 
Frankie he finds it turned into a pale-blue 
eider-down quilt, which suits his tempera- 
ment much better. 

Louise Whitehouse is coming home soon. 
Her year abroad has lengthened into several 
years, and they have been the most beauti- 
ful of her life, she writes. “Living with a 
song in one’s life may be the sweetest while 
it lasts and before one thinks; but to live 
by a psalm is to find life infinitely more 
beautiful and worthier. JI never can be 
thankful enough that my life was taken 
out of my hands at the time when I clung 
to it most blindly, and ordered anew mn One 
stronger and wiser than I.” 

Tears come to my eyes whenever I think 
of this girl. I do not quite know why, 
unless it is that there always is something 


I TURN MY FACE WESTWARD 183 


sad in watching the tempering of a bright 
young enthusiasm, even though it becomes 
more useful than when so sparkling and 
high-strung. 

I have been at great pains to have Charlie 
Hardy realize how happy Louise is, but his 
conscience still troubles him at times. He 
says he knows he did the right thing for 
every one concerned, but he dislikes the 
idea of himself in so disagreeable a rdle; 
and Louise’s opinion of him now, after the 
one she did have, is a constant humiliation 
to him. Women always have admired him, 
and he objects very strongly to any ex- 
ception to the rule. I think he misses the 
mental ozone which he found in Louise. I 
often wonder if men who have loved supe- 
rior women and married average ones do 
not have occasional wonderings and yearn- 
ings over lost “might have beens.” 

The Mayos still live in the brown house, 
which has been enlarged and greatly beauti- 
fied recently. I have an enthusiastic friend- 
ship with the children, who are growing into 
slim slips of girls and sturdy, clear-eyed 
boys, and their house is stilla home. Frank's 


184 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


admiration for soubrettes died a sudden 
and violent death at the masked notoriety 
of his initial escapade, and for a time he 
was shocked into better behavior. We 
hear odd rumors floating around, however, 
of whose truth we never can be sure, but 
which we shake our heads over, after the 
fashion of those whose confidence has been 
caught napping once. We never knew 
whether Nellie discovered the truth or not. 
If Frank denied it, it would not affect mat- 
ters with her if the world rang with it. Her 
idolatry has a certain blind stubbornness in 
it which I should not care to beat against. 

Bronson does not stand as straight as he 
did when I first knew him. Rachel says he. 
has “a scholarly stoop.” But she knows, 
and I know, that something besides law- 
books and parchment has taken the elastic- 
ity out of his step. 

Many years have gone by since I became 
an Old Maid. I want to call my Alter Ego’s 
attention to this fact gently but firmly, be- 
cause I have an idea that she still considers 
herself ‘only thirty,” and that she thinks 
she has just begun to be an Old Maid. 


I TURN MY FACE WESTWARD 185 


Whereas she is old and so am I. I do not 
mind it at all. Neither does she; it is only 
that she had not realized it. We have so 
much to think about more important than 
our stupid ages. People have grown used 
to seeing us about, and we like the same 
things, and keep going at about the same 
pace and in the same road, and I think we 
have come to be an Institution. 

I have no worries which I do not borrow 
from my married friends. I keep up with 
the fashions ; my clothes fit me ; my fingers 
still come to the ends of my gloves; I feel 
no leaning towards all-over cloth shoes; I 
have not gone permanently into bonnets. I 
have tried to be a pleasant Old Maid, and 
my reward is that my friends make me feel 
as if they liked to have me about. I am not 
made to feel that Iam fassé. One’s clothes 
and one’s feelings are all that ever make 
one passé. 

Nevertheless, I have turned my face reso- 
lutely towards the setting sun. I am rest- 
ing now. I have given up struggling against 
the inevitable. That is a privilege and an 
attribute of youth. I feel as though I were 


186 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID 


only beginning to live, now that I have 
passed through the period of turmoil and 
come out from the rapids into gently gliding 
water. There is so much in life which we 
could not see at the beginning, but which 
grows with our growth and bears us com- 
pany in the richness of evening-tide. I have 
learned to love my life and to cultivate it. 
Who knows what is in her life until she 
has tended it and made it know that she 
expects something from it in return for all 
her aspirations and endeavors? Even my 
wasted efforts are dear to me. 


‘’Tis greatly wise to talk with our past hours, 
And ask them what report they bore to Heaven, 
And how they might have borne more welcome 

news.” 


Yet there is a sadness in looking back. 
I see the many lost opportunities lifting to 
me their wistful faces, and dumbly plead- 
ing with me to accept them and their prom- 
ises; yet I carelessly passed them by. I see 
worse. I see the rents in the hedge, where 
I forced my wilful way into forbidden fields, 
and only regained my path after weary wan- 


I TURN MY FACE WESTWARD 187 


dering, brier- torn, and none the better for 
my folly. Lost faces come before me which 
I might have gladdened oftener. Voices 
sound in my ear whose tones I might have 
made happier if I would. Withheld sympa- 
thy rises up before me deploring its wasted 
treasure. How can any one be happy in 
looking back? ‘The only pleasure in look- 
ing forwardis in hope. Yet now both grief 
and joy are tempered with a softness which 
enfolds my fretted spirit gratefully. 


‘* Time has laid his hand 
Upon my heart gently ; not smiting it, 
But as a harper lays his open palm 
Upon his harp to deaden its vibrations.” 


And so I am looking forward to-night to 
an old age more peaceful, less turbulent, 
than my youth has been. I reach forward 
gladly, too, for life holds much that is sweet 
to old age, which youth can in no wise com- 
prehend. Possibly this is one reason why 
youth is so anxious to concentrate enjoy- 
ment. But I am tired of concentration. 
There is a wear and tear about it which pre- 
cludes the possibility of pleasure. I want 


188 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID~™ 


to take the rest of my life gently, and by re- 
doubled tenderness repay it for rude hand- 
ling in my youth—that youth which lies very 
far away from me to-night and is wrapped 
in a rainbow mist. 


THE END 


maverLet FERS 


OF A 


WORLDLY WOMAN. 


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